


some place fine and far from here

by alekszova



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Wings, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Post-Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-08-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:40:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 33,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22924243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alekszova/pseuds/alekszova
Summary: Twenty years ago a war between angels and humans destroyed society and civilization. Now with monsters at every corner threatening to tear any living thing it sees apart, Gavin struggles to survive until a wounded Connor shows up. The two travel together across the city, Connor headed to the safety of Jericho and Gavin to find his brother.
Relationships: Connor/Gavin Reed
Comments: 19
Kudos: 67





	1. Connor

He was at a bad age when it happened. Sixteen years old, just old enough to know what the world was like before, just young enough that he didn’t get to experience it. Just at that age where the seed of hope could be sown inside of him. Someday it will all go back to the way it was before. Someday it will be better again. Someday it might be worth being alive.

Gavin was sixteen years old when the world ended and he doesn’t remember anything else.

He doesn’t remember how it happened. Not exactly. It crept up on the world slowly. Mythical creatures and their wings and powers cast across the world in a bedazzling show that entranced everyone until it was ripped out from underneath them. Monstrous things lurking in the shadows, wanting to kill at every moment. It happened slowly, and then it happened so quickly there was nothing else but _this._

He remembers packing everything during the apocalypse. At the time, he didn’t know what was or what wasn’t. He grabbed unnecessary things. A pencil case stuffed full of a pack of pens, highlighters, pencils, jammed so full for the upcoming school year it’s a wonder how any of it fit. It was jammed down at the bottom of the bag with two notebooks and the papers detailing his new schedule and his locker combination. He didn’t think to empty his backpack before he started packing. He didn’t know. He was just trying to hurry. The world was fucking ending.

They weren’t useless—

The MP3 player he had stuffed into the side pocket was, dying after the first week of him trying his best to lull himself to sleep with the familiar sounds of songs before anyone thought anything of angels and demons being real. It hardly did the job. The thing about the end of the world is, it really destroys the little things that people take for granted. He never had a problem falling asleep before, and if he did, there were always the pills in his mother’s drawer that he could steal from.

But the notebook and the writing supplies aided him, even now.

Gavin is crammed onto the last page of one of them, scribbling down the list of items stuffed into the bag beside him or thrown across the backseat of the car. It isn’t much. Two cans of food and three water bottles—one of which needs to be sterilized and another half-empty. They weigh him down. Glass and metal are heavier, but the plastic ones he used to have betrayed him rather quickly in his life on his own. The first splitting open and the second seemingly never really clean. The glass ones are better. He can sit them by the fire when they boil away the bacteria from the river. He thinks it’s a fair trade—weight for time.

Not that he can build a fire out here.

Two days ago he heard the screaming of another human. He thought he imagined it at first, but there’s little mistaking in what a human sounds like when they’re in pain. He didn’t go far. He should’ve. He should’ve run to somewhere else to hide, but he thought it was better if he lay low. Keep quiet. Hold his ground. Ration out his clean water for a few days and stay locked up in this car, only venturing out far enough when he has to.

He has a nice set-up here. It’d be a shame to leave it, and the creature is properly gone by now. There’s no reason it would lurk behind. There aren’t any traces of him in the city. He keeps himself quarantined as far away as he can manage.

He sketches out the shape of the creature in the corner of the page, tiny and small. If he draws smaller, it always turns out better, but he still isn’t much of an artist. He knows he’s getting the teeth wrong. Somehow, the teeth are always wrong.

  
  


He’s going to be out of food soon. He can count all of his empty jars, sitting nestled in a box in the back seat. Five of them out of the twenty he has, scattered across his campsite. There used to be more. There used to be more. But if he pretends not to remember the fifty sitting on the shelves in the cabin, crashing to the floor and shattering across the wooden boards, he’s been good at keeping the ones he has safe and unbroken. Little strips of cloth wrapped around each one, color-coded for what’s inside as best as he can manage.

Gavin doesn’t have much hope. He doesn’t have much love or desire to keep going on. Nothing except his brother, who is somewhere out there, hopefully alive. If one of them is alive, it should be him. He presses a hand to his chest, the note tucked inside his jacket pocket, just in case he has to run and can’t keep it with him. Just in case he loses the address written on the page. But he’s read it a hundred times since then, trying to make sense of the words. He knows it by heart, repeats it over and over. The words on it are getting hard to read. He can’t tell if it’s because he’s folded and unfolded it so many times or if the ink from the cheap pens is fading away.

He pushes open the door to the car, slowly, listening careful in between each of the loud creaks that seem to echo around the trees surrounding him. If he hears something, he can close the door and the metal and glass will protect him long enough to get the gun. But there’s nothing. Nothing but the sounds of the forest, quiet and waiting. Birds chirping in the distance, squirrels racing up and down trees. The animals have taken back what little they can. Thriving without the presence of humans hunting them down to put them up as trophies on their walls. He does his best to hunt as little as possible—he isn’t good at it in the slightest.

Practice makes perfect—

Practice makes for blood on his hands and poorly stitched together blankets from rabbit fur, shredded remains of squirrel meat that he can’t seem to ever skin right. He knows it’s useful. He knows these types of things are necessary. But he was never good at it. His father was the hunter, with his rifle and his trips every chance he got. He never forced Gavin to go with him, not since he first tried to when Gavin was eight years old and started crying because he didn’t stay where he was supposed to and instead followed his dad out to the clearing to watch the deer die. He never went back. He was never forced to.

Gavin leaves the car, closing the door as quietly as he can manage, flinching at the sound it makes. He has to wonder sometimes whether the creatures have good hearing and he has dumb luck or if he’s being overly cautious for no reason, but there’s little else to reassure him that these careful things are worth it than the fact he’s still alive. And if he’s still alive, he has to believe Elijah is, too. He’s smarter than Gavin. He wouldn’t be making stupid decisions that could cost him his life. He isn’t impulsive like Gavin is.

He follows the path, bag pulled up on his arm, all his glass jars taking up the space inside. It’ll be heavier when he comes back, but it’s not a long walk. Only thirty minutes from here, if he hurries.

So he does. Scurrying along the trail quickly, ignoring the animals off in the forest. It’s fucking cold. A foot of snow from here to there, no more of the car to help isolate himself from the wind. If he thought he could risk the fire, he’d be sitting beside one now. Fill up on as much warmth as he can before he continues on, but he can’t.. His father told him it was best to wait three days. He was the one that studied the creature's movements, keeping a careful eye on them, watching for how long they’d stay around an area where there was noise or even the inkling of a promise for food. 

But it’s always a threat, there’s always a risk. The creature that was here for the attack was drawn by somehow. Any other monsters could be lurking, ready to pass by the town. And even if they weren’t, there were screams. It would’ve drawn anything in a five-mile radius over. It’s too risky. Gavin fucking hates the winter. Never enough warmth and too much risk. He doesn’t have much ammo, and taking them down is easier said than done. He could risk a small fire, maybe, just for the water, just for the warmth.

It’s fucking cold out here.

The car does little to shield him from it, even with his extra socks, his extra shirts, his second coat wrapped around the first, held closed with a piece of rope because he never learned how to fix the zipper, though he kept the broken pieces and tries to bend the teeth back into shape whenever he can manage to not get worked up over the frustration of it, but when he gets back it’ll feel like an oven in comparison to the biting wind.

Gavin pauses at the edge of the tree line, surveying the cabin sitting out in a clearing that always makes him uncomfortable. There are too many trees surrounding the edges of the property, not enough to help shield someone in the house or around it, and the front is exposed to the road. A long twisting driveway that’s been snowed over he can only recall the S-shaped curve of it by memory.

It doesn’t look like there’s anything there. There never is.

He takes a step forward—

Pauses.

_No._

  
  


There’s a gun pressed against his neck. He can feel the cold metal against his skin. He can feel the weight of it even though it isn’t in his hand. Maybe the weight is the threat in the air, the bullet in the chamber. _Make a move and you die._

He thinks he will die either way.

Connor’s eyes open, his hand coming up faster than the stranger can pull the trigger, pushing it backwards, bending it in a way that the hand drops the gun, a hiss and a curse between his teeth as Connor scrambles to get it first, picking it up and aiming it at him. He’s dizzy, disorientated, but he still gets the gun before the stranger does.

“Don’t fucking—” he pauses, the anger and volume of his words cutting short. When he speaks again, it’s quieter, but not calmer. “Don’t shoot.”

“Why not?” Connor asks. “You were going to shoot _me_ , weren’t you?”

“No. I was going to talk to you.”

“I don’t believe that,” he says. “You can see me. You would’ve shot me.”

“And draw one of those things over to me?” he asks. “You think I want to die?”

“Oh, so you’re not as stupid as you look?”

“No,” he says, and he reaches forward, like he’s going to swipe for the gun from Connor’s hand, but he pulls away quicker, the gun above his head, his feet taking a step backwards, he stumbles. His leg is struggling to hold his weight, and he hopes that the strange doesn’t notice it. But his eyes are on the gun in the air, too short to reach it. It’s like playing keep away with a child. “Give me my gun back.”

“No.”

“Look, you aren’t stupid enough to shoot me either, so give it back—”

“No,” he repeats, turning the gun back to him. “You’re wrong.”

“About?”

“A-About me shooting you,” Connor says, his words are catching, slurring together slightly. He’s trying to cling on but he can’t figure out how. “I could kill one of those things if it got near me. Easy.”

“Easy,” he echoes. “So you _are_ one of them, huh?”

He takes another step backward, the cabin’s behind his back. He couldn’t make it there in time. He was too weak. He collapsed by the side of the house, but there are still feathers on the ground around them, stained with the same blue blood that is dried on his face. He’s had a fair amount of time to heal, but his arms still ache and the gun isn’t helping.

“What are you doing out here?” the stranger asks. “Why aren’t you with your flock?”

“Maybe I am. Maybe this is a trap and they’re all watching from the trees to get to you.”

“And what would they want with me?”

“I don’t know. Maybe just to kill you. Would you put it past them?”

“No. Wouldn’t put it past them to kill one of their own, either. You look half dead. What happened to you?”

Too much to say. Too much to put into words for a stranger.

“What’s your name?” Connor asks instead.

“Avoiding the question, huh?”

“What’s. Your. Name?”

“Gavin. Yours?”

“Connor.”

“Connor. Fucking kind of name is that for a bird?”

He looks away from him to the gun, turning the safety off, tucking it into his waistband, “What kind of name is Gavin for a human that shouldn’t be alive anymore?”

“Threatening me again?”

“Pointing out the obvious. You’re smart enough not to shoot me but not smart enough to wait until I wake up and leave. You confronted me. What if I _had_ wanted to kill you?”

“Then I guess I’d be dead. What difference does it make? It’s the end of the fucking world. Who gives a shit anymore?”

“You do,” Connor says, watching him carefully. “Or you wouldn’t be here anymore. You had a gun. You could’ve killed yourself. And you must come to this garden nearly every day. If you really didn’t care about living or dying, you wouldn’t be out here check in on crops every day. You’re still fighting for something.”

“What, have you been spying on me?”

“No,” Connor replies. “I’m just smarter than you. More observant.”

“How wonderful. Are you going to give me my gun back?”

“N-No,” he blinks, squeezing his eyes together, willing the space to stop spinning. “No—”

“Connor? Hey—”

  
  


“You awake again?”

Connor blinks up at the ceiling, his breath coming out shaking and forced, as though it takes effort and thought to inhale and exhale. “How long was I out?”

“Long enough for me to figure out how to haul a fucking bird into my house. Take your pants off, will you?”

Connor’s hand comes up, pushing him backwards. His vision is slow, resting on Gavin’s face with disgust and annoyance. “Get away from me.”

“Hey, stop—” Gavin catches his hands, stopping them from hitting his face. “Your bleeding, let me help you,. I could’ve phrased it better but you don’t have to claw my fucking eyes out.”

“I don’t need your help.”

“Your bleeding all over my couch.”

“I don’t care.”

“Look,” he pins Connor’s arms down. “You think you can psychoanalyze a fucking garden? You ran away from a camp. You fought against one of those things to live. You’re not going to just give up right now. Let me help you. I won’t do anything but bandage you, okay? You can have the gun. Shoot me if I do.”

“Is that a promise?”

“Yeah. It’s a promise,” Gavin lets go of him, leaning back. He hands Connor the gun and watches him hold it against his chest like a lifeline. “Hey, Con?”

“What?”

“I know what kind of world we’re living in now, okay?” he whispers. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

“I’m just a strange bird, what do you care?”

“You think you being a stranger is going to change anything?”

“You held a gun on me ten minutes ago.”

Gavin tilts his head, doesn’t bother correcting him that it took at least ten minutes to pull him up into the house. He was afraid of hurting him. There are bruises blooming across his back. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and they were only hidden because Connor kept his back toward him. He doesn’t have the strength he used to.

“Well, I think murder is a little more forgivable then—”

“Yeah. I know. Can you just—”

“Right.”

  
  


He has to hand it to Connor—

He doesn’t move or flinch when Gavin stitches the gash on his thigh closed. But he shakes the entire time the needle isn’t about to be pressed into his skin. Gavin lets him wrap the cloth around it himself. He can tell by the way he moves that he doesn’t want Gavin that close to him, touching him unless he has to.

“How old are you?” Connor asks, taking a shirt from Gavin’s hands, him turned away, like he’s afraid to look at him.

“How old do I look?”

“Forty?”

“Forty!” he lets out a harsh laugh. “Jesus, I’m not that old.”

“What, then? Thirty-nine?”

“Oh fuck off,” Gavin says, tossing the blanket toward him. “I’m thirty-six. How old are you, baby-face?”

“Thirty-three.”

“Child soldier, then?”

“Yeah.. I guess.”

Gavin turns back, looks to him curled up underneath the blanket, jeans back on, his foot is resting against the edge of the coffee table as he ties the laces on his boots again. And again. And again. He keeps undoing them, retying tighter than he had before.

“You want something to eat?”

  
  


The camps had better food. More variety. So much so that he never had to worry about eating until the last week had come and gone by. But he doesn’t complain. He doesn’t mind all that much, either. Hunger means not being picky about meals, and he barely pauses to think about what he’s eating. Carrots and berries and brussel sprouts. He misses bread. He misses the soup that he’d sip out of a mug while sitting on the bench, listening to everyone pass stories back and forth.

Gavin gives him a shirt, too. Long sleeves that cover up his arms, a tight restriction that feels almost suffocating, even though the fabric is loose on his body. He’s thinner than he should be, and he knows the shirt is something Gavin must’ve worn often, because the fabric is stretched out. Boxy like his stocky frame. Gavin looks like a brute, ready to destroy something.

Maybe that’s the second coat, though. Connor’s reflexes aren’t the greatest with how much of his energy has been drained, and he still got the gun from Gavin.

“I know I said no talking, but what the hell happened to you?”

“Ran away.”

“From your flock?”

Connor sighs, but doesn’t say anything. There’s no real harm in calling their groups flocks. It just feels wrong. He isn’t a bird. It wasn’t a flock. It was an army, handing them guns, arming them against the creatures. Taking the planet back one by one. Who knew they were going to end up this way? The humans were supposed to go quietly. The creatures weren’t supposed to exist.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t agree with what they were doing.”

“And they beat the shit out of you for it?”

Connor shakes his head, “No. I got into a fight with one of them.”

“Was that you?” Gavin asks, tilting his head. “Two days ago, I heard someone scream. Was that you?”

Had he screamed? He doesn’t remember. Connor likes to think himself smart enough not to make such a mistake.

“You’re making a mistake,” Connor says. “Trusting me. You ask me why I think you’re stupid and then you let me into your cabin to eat your food.”

“Should I not trust you?”

“No. Yes,” Connor pauses. “I won’t hurt you if you don’t hurt me. I just don’t want to go back to them.”

“Fine,” Gavin says. “Then it’ll be a deal. We don’t hurt each other.”

Connor looks at his held out hand, taking it after a moment of hesitation, “And you promise you won’t kill me in my sleep?”

“For what? To eat you? You’ve got no muscle on you, man, and I don’t like chickens.”

Connor shakes his head, turning back to the berries, sweet and acidic, staining his fingers with their juices.

“I don’t stay at the cabin,” Gavin says. “But you can sleep here, if you want. There are beds upstairs. Should be a few blankets somewhere.”

“I’ll leave in the morning. You won’t even notice I’m gone.”

“You should stay until that heals,” Gavin says, nodding towards his leg. “You shouldn’t walk on it more than you have to.”

“I’ll be fine. I heal fast.”

“Then stay two days. Don’t make my medical supplies go to waste because you go trampling out into town and get killed in two seconds.”

“Fine,” Connor says. “But I’m leaving the second after. You’re rather annoying. I wouldn’t want to be around you for a second meal.”

“You’re a little piece of shit yourself, you know that?”

Connor laughs, and it feels strange. He doesn’t remember the last time he laughed, even if it’s this short, bubbling thing that doesn’t last.

  
  


There’s two blankets in the closet, both thick and comforting, blocking out the cold air that plagues the upstairs even more than the ground floor. Connor curls underneath them, pulling the quilt up over his face, hiding away. Gavin had given him some water from his bottle, another small pail of it to help clean the blood from his skin. It still feels cold where the water touched him, as though it froze into a thin layer of ice over him. His entire body feels that way, frozen solid. He doesn’t remember feeling this cold before. As though his insides are shaking and trembling in an effort to generate some worth.

He closes his eyes, willing himself to fall asleep, but the wind sweeps through the house, creaking and groaning and howling in such a way that it’s hard not to stay alert, even as desperately as he keeps his eyes shut.

Somewhere out there is a creature that almost tore him to shreds. Somewhere out there are his people, angry and betrayed, who would kill him on sight, even if they might not hunt him down specifically to do so. There is likely little point in them tracking Connor down to kill him—revenge isn’t something they would really dwell on unless Connor were a threat. But there are other things out in the wild to be scared of. There is Gavin, who disappeared into the forest, who’s small form made an arc around the backyard. Connor could see him through the trees, pretending to walk one way before going back the other. It’d be a good idea—if the trees weren’t so bare. He blends into the trunks and the snow, but not entirely.

He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him. Either of them. They are trusting too easily. Connor still has Gavin’s gun, tucked between the mattress and the wall. Gavin didn’t ask for it back, and even if he had, Connor wouldn’t have given it to him. He needs his own protection. A gun is a better threat than just him, and he doesn’t think that Gavin would believe it when he says he could tear Gavin apart with little struggle.

But he wouldn’t.

Not unless it felt necessary.

He is tired of the feeling of blood underneath his fingernails.

  
  


Gavin stays up into the night working by the light of the moon to deal with the food he’s brought back, hanging in the backpack on his shoulder or clustered together in the woven basket in his hand. He has to split his food between here, the cabin, and somewhere out in the stretch of woods. Just in case. He needs something to fall back on if anything happens. It works like a cycle: at the cabin, every day, he’ll tend to the farm. Harvest what he can and leave the rest. Smoke the meat from any animals in traps that have stumbled across them. Most of the empty jars stay there, pushed to the back, waiting for him to fill them up. He brings a few with him here, splits that group into two, takes the rest out into a place marked with careful signals in the trees leading him to a beat-up metal box buried in the dirt.

His backseat seems empty now without the jars. They piled up in the last two weeks, coming back with him to be cleaned out.

He has a system, but it’s hard to stick to it. In the last twenty years he was taught over and over again to value survival over succumbing to emotional baggage, but it doesn’t always work. He can’t always cling to that. There’s too much pulling him down.

Gavin lays down as best as he can in the backseat of the car, blankets and furs pulled up around him. There are tarps and blankets taped and glued and nailed into place around the windows, blocking out the cold. Not entirely. He finds on most nights when he can’t sleep, he’ll just unhook them from their place, looking out at the area around him, trying to see if something is watching him. But tonight Gavin’s attention is on something else.

A feather. The only one that the wind didn’t take away when he was inside with Connor. He thought it was black at first, but he thinks it’s blue. A deep midnight blue, only reflecting the colors when light hits it. A broken bird boy is in his cabin, broken in more ways than one.

Aren’t they all?

_You’re making a mistake trusting me._

He hopes not.

  
  


He finds Connor outside by the house, a hand trailing along scratch marks made in the surface of the wood. Deep claw wounds gouging the wood. A reminder of things long since past. Connor pauses, looking up to meet his gaze and Gavin tosses the bundle in his arm towards him, watching with some amusement how Connor struggles to catch it.

“What’s this?”

“Clothes.”

“You’re giving me more clothes?”

“Don’t make anything of it, okay?” he says, leaning against the wall. “It doesn’t mean anything. But you’re not going to fucking freeze to death because of me.”

“No. Of course not.” Connor takes a small step toward him, copying his movement of leaning against the wall, “When was the last time you saw a human?”

“Are you human?”

“Fine. When was the last time you were around a person?”

“Five years ago,” he says quietly. “But don’t like… twist it anything, bird boy. My loneliness isn’t making me wish you’d stay.”

“I could.”

“I don’t want you to. So don’t.”

“And if I did? Just to annoy you?”

“There are other, quieter ways to kill people out here. I don’t need the gun..”

Connor smiles, and that smile is full of trouble. Light barely noticeable scars stretched and contorted with it, deep brown eyes that drop the world out from under him. Gavin didn’t notice them before.

Yes—

It’s been a long time since he’s been around someone. But that isn’t going to change anything. Connor is going to leave when he gets better. That’s the end of that.

  
  


Connor doesn’t leave. It starts out from Gavin frustrated and annoyed trying to give him the basics to help him survive. He has nothing to him but a pair of jeans and boots that he brought with him from the camps, two shirts that Gavin has given him, and a sweater that has been poorly repaired, the other too thin to really keep him warm. But the pair of them help block out the cold. Gavin keeps telling him how it’s a wonder he’s still alive. Connor doesn’t tell him that it’s almost solely his wings and his feathers that helped keep him warm, that the magic drains him to protect against things like frostbite. It’s easier to pretend it’s a miracle he still has all ten fingers.

The days pass by as Gavin teaches him how to make a bow and arrows. It’s shoddy, not as sturdy as the ones that they were given at the camps, but feels familiar in his hands, even if he retains none of the lessons on how to string together. He knows how to use it. He’s probably better than Gavin when it comes to it.

But he stays.

Days of learning to take care of himself blurring into days of taking care of the garden. Him and Gavin don’t always cross paths. Most days Gavin isn’t around until closer to night, when he trudges along with an animal he’s hunted to kill and eat, always sharing the food with Connor like he’s obligated to, always annoyed and always frustrated, but always sitting beside him at the fire.

They don’t talk. Not about anything other than how to survive. Which direction the river is in and where all the traps are. Not to go to the town, because it’s empty and dangerous. Not to trust strangers (except each other) and how to dry clothes by the fire in the winter without catching them on fire, even though Connor isn’t an idiot and already knows most of these things.

They don’t talk about themselves. Connor doesn’t press. He lets them have their short meetings around dinner, filled with topics about what to do with the bones from a deer (though Gavin never catches one) and the uses of fur from the rabbit. Short conversations that never really go anywhere ( _Where are you headed to? When you leave? —North_.) And then Gavin is gone. A quiet goodnight passed between them as he leaves, always doing his exit towards the right of the cabin, curving back around to go left.

Connor followed him once a week later. Carefully, quietly, sneaking through the woods to see where he stays. It was impressive in the fact it was so well put together. But it still looked like he had stumbled upon someone’s backyard junk space. Tents over chests and half-destroyed bikes left in heaps. Barrels filled to the brim with snow or sticks and logs poking out from underneath the tarps. There’s a car, grimy and snow-covered, off to the side. He watched as Gavin wiped the snow away carefully, like he was trying his best to make it look like it had fallen naturally to the floor instead of by a human hand.

He left before Gavin could see him there. Away from the small camp that somehow seemed homier than the cabin, emptied out and only housing him and some food. He kicked off his shoes, curled up underneath his blankets, wished for the ninth time on the ninth night that Gavin had stayed. The emptiness is weighing him down. He’s used to bunk beds full of people lining his sleeping space. He’s used to friends and family of those friends staying up and chattering until someone finally yells at them to knock it off. There was life there in those rooms. Cluttered with people trying to stay awake to read another chapter or whispering about their worries or singing quiet songs.

There’s nothing here.

He doesn’t want to go back to them, but he is acutely aware of how nothing exists in this cabin.

  
  


“Do you have a last name?” Gavin asks, sitting across from him at the fire, tossing another stick in. 

“No. Do you?”

“Reed,” he says quietly. “You don’t have a last name?”

“I’m sure I did at one point,” Connor replies. “I can’t remember it now.”

“And you don’t think those people are after you? The ones you left?”

“I wasn’t starting a revolution with my people, Gavin, I’m of no threat to them.”

“But they tried to kill you when you left.”

He doesn’t say it like a question, but Connor knows it is one. The wounds he had when he arrived here were from one of the things wandering the world now. The faded scars on his face are not. There are more, hidden underneath his clothes. Ones he doesn’t think Gavin really noticed because Gavin tried his best not to let his gaze linger on his chest. Embarrassed schoolboy, frightened by a bird.

“They did. That was different.”

“How so?”

“What happened to the people that were with you before?” Connor asks. “You said it’s been five years. There are three rooms in the cabin. You weren’t always alone.”

“They died.”

“Well,” Connor says, this time being the one to stand up, to leave first. “Maybe we aren’t so different after all, then.”

  
  


He counts everything he has. He counts it again. He avoids Connor’s gaze the next morning when he comes by to double-check the stock of food here, too. It helps to count. It gives him something to do other than think.

“I have to leave,” Gavin says, setting a jar back down, his eyes stuck on the countertop where his scribbles line out a messy _5_ next to the word _carrots._

“Okay. Which direction are you going?”

“West. And I’ll be gone a long time. I might not come back.”

“Then why are you going?”

Gavin turns away, looking toward Connor in a different one of Gavin’s sweaters. He looks strange in it. The soft blue matches his skin better than it matches his own, but he remembers his mother holding the yarn up to his face, telling him it brings out his eyes. And at the time he laughed, not knowing if it was a joke or not. He could never tell whether she was being sweet to him because she was his mother or because she needed something other than the drizzly rain and harsh cold of the outdoors to focus on. She was a better mother, before. But all of the things she did when the world wasn’t ending was destroyed by the monsters and the angels.

The memory makes him look away from Connor, settling on the old rocking chair by the fireplace where she would sit, carefully knitting away new things for their wardrobe. She never scavenged for food. She scavenged for craft supplies. People don’t think to take the balls of yarn from the shelves, the books that would help teach her, the various tools necessary to craft something. She used to make him sweaters, scarves, gloves every winter when he was a kid. It used to be something she enjoyed, and then it turned into something necessary for survival. It chipped away at whatever she had left.

“Gavin?”

“My brother’s still alive,” he says. “I’m going to find him.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“No, but I know where he’s going to be.”

Connor takes a step forward, movement drawing Gavin’s attention back to him. Confused and concerned as he comes to his side, “What do you mean?”

“Five years ago when he left he gave me directions to meet up with him.”

“And you didn’t decide to go until now?”

“Fuck,” he says quietly. “He told me not to go. Not for five years. That it would be safer then. I don’t know why he left, Connor. He didn’t tell me. He left a note in the middle of the night. I didn’t go because there would be no point in going. I doubt our meet up spot is where he’s staying.”

“And this isn’t just a lie to run away from me?”

Gavin laughs, “Yeah, right. I told you. If I wanted you gone, I could kill you.”

“You keep saying that, but I don’t think you have that in you.”

“No?” Gavin asks, taking a step away from him toward the door. “Every day you get a little closer. But it will be a bonus not having you around.”

“And you’re sure about that?” Connor asks, crossing his arms. “You don’t want me to go with you?”

“Traveling in pairs is dangerous,” he says. “And somebody needs to take care of the garden.”

“Somebody needs to take care of you, too.”

“I’ve survived for twenty years out here, Con, I’m fine.”

“Only five of those were on your own. You haven’t left this place, have you?” he asks, looking over to the pictures on the wall. The ones of Gavin when he’s a kid. The ones of him at the beach or at home with his family. The ones that clearly hold the same features as his own and can’t be ignored. “You don’t know what’s outside of your safety net here, do you?”

“And you plan on keeping me safe?”

“I can try.”

“What about north? I thought you were headed north.”

“No—” Connor smiles. “No, sorry. I should’ve been more clear—North’s my friend.”

“North is your… friend?”

“I’m headed West. To Jericho. North is a girl I know. So my going with you, Gavin? It’s not entirely to keep you safe.”

“Oh,” Gavin laughs. “Wow. Now I feel stupid.”

“You should.”

Gavin tosses the pencil toward him, watching Connor turn with a smile, hands coming up to shield himself from the hit, “And you’re not lying to come with me, right? You’re not in love with me, are you?”

“Absolutely not.”

Gavin scoffs, adjusting the bag on his shoulder, “Fine. I don’t know why you care, but fine. You can come with. But I’m probably a faster runner than you., and that’s all that’s gonna fuckin’ count if one of those things come at us.”

“We’ll see. My leg is healed now. I might just prove to be faster than you,” Connor says, glancing down at him. “And you’ve got short legs.”

“I’m gonna break your kneecaps and we’ll see who’s the short one then.”

Connor smiles, biting back a laugh in the way Gavin remembers doing when his friend would make a sly dig at Elijah and he’d have to pretend to be a good brother, to not laugh at the jokes hurled his way. He likes it, the smile. He wishes he didn’t. It’s a dangerous game to play, caring about people during a time like this.


	2. Alice

They walk in complete silence. They have to. The sounds of their footsteps are already too loud. Gavin knows the creatures don’t have supersonic hearing, but he always worries. He was always that kid that would watch zombie movies and see the characters arguing loudly outside, and then act surprised when they drew zombies toward their houses. And these things are much more dangerous than zombies. He can’t risk it. So he doesn’t talk. And he makes sure that every time Connor wants to say something, it’s important enough to risk being heard. A quiet hushed whisper that nearly gets lost with the wind.

And it helps.

It helps not having to talk sometimes. He isn’t used to it. He doesn’t really know how—

He hasn’t been around another person for five years, and that was his brother. He hasn’t been around a stranger that made him revert back to a teen again, looking away like just eye contact would risk something as dangerous as attraction during a time like this. It’s been seven years since he was with another person that wasn’t his family. Back when he was young and foolish enough to give into those feelings and allow himself to want it. Back before he knew what it was like to be totally and completely alone. Back when Gavin let him leave the safety of their cabin because he had a life he needed to get to. A life that would never involve Gavin.

“Gavin?”

“Be quiet,” he says, and his voice breaks on that last word.

Connor’s hand touches his arm, grasps onto the fabric of his coat and pulls him to a stop, “You’re crying.”

“What—?”

“It’s freezing out here,” Connor says, his hands brushing away his tears. Gavin steps back, pulling away from him. “Gavin—”

“I’m fine.”

“They’ll freeze to your face.”

“You sound like some dumb middle aged mom with her conspiracy theories. Next you’ll tell me not to stick my tongue to street poles.”

“Well, I hoped I wouldn’t have to, but if I must—”

“I’m fine,” Gavin says quietly. “Just leave me the fuck alone, okay?”

“Okay.”

  
  


Connor watches him. He watches him when he pauses for a break, he watches him when they walk, he watches him when they find an abandoned building to rest in while they eat, shielded from the wind and the cold as they pass food and water back in forth in the quiet. 

“Can you stop staring at me?”

“Technically.”

“Alright,” Gavin says, picking up his gloves where he left them by the counter beside him where he sits, throwing them towards Connor. “ _Will you_ stop staring at me?”

“Will you tell me why you were crying?”

“Oh fuck, this again?” Gavin stuffs his things back into his bag. “I’m not talking about this with you. I barely know you.”

“It might help—”

“I don’t give a shit if it helps. I’m not telling you. You gonna tell me why your face is all fucked up?”

Connor’s eyebrows knit together, his head tilting to the side. He knows about his scars. He’s not stupid. But they aren’t noticeable. They hardly qualify as ‘fucking his face up’. “Excuse me?”

“You make that stupid expression all the time when you look at me, like you’re trying to figure me out.”

“My expression—” Connor pauses for a second. “My expression is the fucked up thing about my face?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh,” he laughs. “Okay.”

“What?”

“You’re like a child, you know that?”

“I’ve been told.”

“You need to grow up,” Connor says, tossing Gavin’s gloves back to him. “You’re an idiot.”

“You don’t need to insult me just because I insulted you.”

“Let the punishment fit the crime,” he replies. He takes a step forward, Gavin’s gaze shifts from him to his hands, tugging the gloves back on. “You can talk to me, you know that, right?”

“I don’t know you well enough to talk to you about these things, Connor.”

“But you could.”

“Why would it matter?” Gavin asks. “You’re leaving. We’re going to go our separate ways.”

“Maybe. That doesn’t mean we have to be strangers. We can be honest with each other.”

“If we want to protect ourselves, it does,” he says, looking up to him. “Look, you want honesty? You’re nice but—I’ve lost enough people. If I make you my friend, I’m just going to be losing another person. And I’d rather never have anyone again then lose someone one more time. This last week has been kind of fun and mostly annoying but it doesn’t mean anything. There. There’s your stupid fucking honesty.”

He doesn’t know why he’s so disappointed. He doesn’t know why it feels like his heart is dropping or his hands want to shake. Connor doesn’t understand why the way Gavin is looking at him and his words make him want to turn and run away again.

But he knows, too.

He knows what it was like, leaving all of the people he cared about behind. But with them there was a promise. One day they’d get out, one day they’d find their path to Jericho. One day his people trying to get rid of the monsters and make the world habitable again for his kind. And they and the humans would overpower the ones trying to destroy it to rebuild it as their sanctuary. He lost them, but it felt like a temporary loss. He’s never completely lost anyone that he really loved. There has always been a promise that they’d come back again.

Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe that’s why he’s so upset. Gavin will be the first one he’ll ever lose.

“Okay,” he says quietly, because he doesn’t know what else to say. “Fine by me.”

There’s no point in trying to fight for something just to be pushed back down into the dirt again. And he’s not going to beg.

  
  


They don’t pass by cities. They take a path that avoids anything much bigger than a small town, and Gavin doesn’t like to linger in them too long, but they stop occasionally by houses and stores that don’t look like they’ve been entirely destroyed or ransacked. The likelihood of finding anything after twenty years is slim, but there’s always a possibility. Connor follows him into mostly small shops, ones that seem like they’d have nothing in them that would be of use.

“That’s where you always find things,” Gavin says quietly, pushing the door open slowly, passing by broken glass and where snow was piled up by the door. Some of them look like they have chipped paint on them, probably the same as the word printed out on the faded sign above the shop. Golden paint and careful script spelling out the name _KAR_ before the rest becomes unreadable from weathering and snow piled up on top of it. “People don’t think to look where they should.”

“It’s been twenty years.”

“Yes,” Gavin says, turning to face him. “And most of the population is dead. Especially around here.”

“Small towns go first?”

“No, big cities do. And then people flee them, thinking they’ll be safe out here, but they only draw attention to the small towns with populations of like fucking six and it only takes one of those creatures to tear them apart.”

“Sounds perfectly logical.”

“It is.”

“How did it happen for you?” Connor asks, following him toward the back of the store, where the shelves are lined with fabric, rolled up tight and waiting to be chosen by a customer that’ll never come. Gavin’s hand runs along one of the bolts of plaid. Gray and black with red running through it. When his hand comes away, Connor expects a trail of dust to be disturbed, but there’s nothing. Just fabric sitting on the shelf.

“The apocalypse?” Gavin shrugs. “Must’ve been the same as any other.”

“Yeah?” he steps forward, leaning against the wall beside him. “Come on. I’m curious. I’ve never talked to a human before.”

“No?” Gavin smiles. “I feel so lucky. I’ve never talked to a bird before.”

“I’m not a bird.”

“Angel, then.”

“I’m not an angel.”

“Then what are you?”

Connor shrugs, “I don’t know. We never really had a name for ourselves. We just… kept secret. But we did have halos.”

“You had a halo?”

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “A lot more painful than you think, getting rid of them.”

Prying them from where they were implanted in the side of his head, where they would track his every movement, where they would send out a quiet signal, a wave of emotion and feeling like a rope being tugged on. _Your kind is near!_ Like a whale song, never letting them be alone. It’s too difficult to try and make sense of it with Gavin. He wouldn’t know the right words. But there was always that soft glow, always illuminating a tiny space in the dark. So many times he squeezed his eyes shut, turned his face against the pillow, willed it to go away. They told them that it was so they never felt like they were alone. If they were in danger, they’d always have something to guide them towards their people. But it was really just a way to track them, keep an eye on each and every one. Connor’s never met a human before, and it’s almost strange, seeing that blank space on Gavin’s temple, like he’s waiting for one to appear. He wonders what color Gavin’s would be.

Red, he thinks.

Maybe green.

“You don’t have yours anymore?”

“No.”

“And did you do that or did they?”

“I did. And you didn’t answer my question,” Connor says, moving past him. A shuffle off footsteps as they move along. “What happened, the day the world ended? How did it go for you?”

“Packed my shit. Ran with my family out to the cabin my dad used when he went hunting. Learned how to garden with my mom because I was shit at catching anything in the woods,” Gavin replies. “And you? Did you know it was going to happen?”

“No. It was a secret. They had a lot of them.”

“Are you going to tell me the secrets of the birds, Connor?”

He watches Gavin, watches him walk down the next aisle, looking along at the hoops hanging on hooks, embroidery how-to books lining the shelf below it. Their feet move quietly along the floor as Connor follows him. When they pause, the noise doesn’t. There is a second delay. A soft sound of footsteps, like an echo.

Connor moves closer, arms wrapping around his waist from behind him, “I can tell you a lot of secrets, Gavin, and they have nothing to do with birds.”

“Connor—”

He lowers his voice, a whisper of words that he knows are just loud enough for Gavin to hear them, “We’re not alone.”

“W-What?”

“There’s someone in the store with us. I need you to play along.”

Gavin’s hand rests over Connor’s, holding on tightly, “And is there anything you’re going to do about that?”

“No.” _They’re not a threat._

“No?” Gavin says, leaning back against him. “Don’t like me enough?”

“I like you plenty.” _We’ll be okay._

Gavin turns around, his arms looping around Connor’s neck, “Should we get out of here, then?”

Connor nods, the simple agreement of saying it out loud feels like too much. Gavin is standing very close to him, and he didn’t really notice before, just how close that was. If Connor reached out, if he pulled down the scarf wrapped around his face—

What is he thinking?

How stupid can he be?

It’s an act. Poorly crafted and maybe not the best executed, but an _act—_

“Connor?”

He leans his forehead against Gavin’s, resting there for a second with his eyes closed. He feels the soft fabric of Gavin’s scarf brush against his face, the arms around his neck moving, gloved hands resting against his face for a moment before settling against his shoulders.

“Let’s go, Con.”

He nods, taking Gavin’s hands, letting him pull him along toward the door. He tries not to look back, but it’s hard. There is an innate curiosity of whoever else was in the shop, and when he does glance over his shoulder, he sees a girl. A child. Peering around the corner of a shelf, spying on them with wide eyes. By herself?

Connor’s eyes move upward, to the apartment above the shop. The curtain there moving when his eyes settle on one of the windows. Not alone, then. There aren’t any broken windows up there. There’s no reason the curtain would’ve dropped like that.

Not a threat, and not alone.

  
  


It occurs to Connor while they make their way down the street again, hands still together, like they’re glued that way, that _they_ were the threats. Connor’s used to that. But Gavin? He looks unnerved, and he doesn’t let go of Connor’s hand until they’re half a mile down the road out of town, and even then it doesn’t last. A few seconds later he’s clinging onto Connor again, his breathing coming out uneven.

“Are you okay?”

“No talking.”

“Gavin—”

“I’m fine. I told you before. We need to keep quiet.”

“They wouldn’t have hurt us.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know when someone’s scared, Gavin, and they were scared.”

Gavin pauses, taking a step back, like he wants to get away from Connor, but he won’t let go of him, so Connor just stumbles the step toward him to keep his arm from being pulled out of place.

“You don’t know that, Connor. When people are scared they’re at their most dangerous. You have no idea what they would’ve done to protect themselves.”

“And what would you have done? Shoot them? We left, Gavin. We’re fine. We’re okay.”

“But we could’ve died.”

“Can you calm down?”

“No!” he says, pausing for a moment before continuing. His voice is louder than Connor thinks he’s okay with, but he’s too angry to care. “People hurt other people. That’s how the end of the world happens. The humans tear each other apart because they want power and they want to survive. I’ve seen it happen. You can’t trust people.”

“You trust me.”

“And you told me it was a mistake. So you know. You know how people are—”

“Gavin, if I thought she would’ve hurt you, I would’ve protected you.”

“Yeah?” Gavin asks, and he says it in a way that seems genuinely scared, like he wants an answer, an honest one. He isn’t saying it as a joke. He isn’t saying it like he doesn’t believe Connor. He’s asking him for reassurance.

“Yes. I promise.” Connor takes a step towards him, “It’s going to be okay. We’re alright. Maybe we got lucky, but even if we didn’t, we would’ve been fine. I promise.”

Gavin nods, his grip on Connor’s hand tightening, “I’m sorry I freaked out.”

“It’s okay.”

“I haven’t—I haven’t been out here alone. I’ve never really been out of the cabin. I’m not used to it.”

“And yet you're the one with all the rules and tips on how to survive out here.”

“Are you making fun of me?” Gavin asks. “Because I’m not really—I’m not really in the kind of mood to be teased.”

“Okay,” Connor says, stepping toward him, wrapping an arm around him. “I’m sorry.”

“I can take care of myself, you know?” Gavin whispers. “I’m not a baby. I don’t need you to comfort me when I freak out.”

“Maybe it’s not for you,” he replies. “Maybe I was scared, too.”

“I would’ve protected you, too.”

“I know.”

“But don’t like, think I’m in love with you,” Gavin whispers. “You’re carrying half my supplies. I can’t risk losing that.”

“Okay.”

“Purely survival.”

“I believe you.”

  
  


He feels weak and stupid, but he can’t let go of Connor’s hand. They walk down the path side by side in the quiet. Every so often Connor squeezes his hand and Gavin squeezes it back, and it helps.

It’s strange. He used to have panic attacks all the time when he was younger. Going to school or passing by the football field on the way home when the jocks would yell something after him. When Elijah was supposed to leave for college and started writing his admission essays, he was the one beside Gavin to help him through the panic of being alone without his brother. It never happened. The world ended before Elijah could even find out what college would accept him, not that it mattered. They all would. Elijah’s a genius. They’d all be lucky to have him there.

The panic attacks faded slowly. He stayed in the cabin, where it was safe. He tended to the garden. He worked out a routine. He kept a rhythm going. And on the nights when he could hear the sounds of the monsters passing by their home, not knowing there was humans lurking inside, or the screams of the people in the city, Elijah was the one that helped him. There were no more pills to help the anxiety. There was no safety net of therapists and doctors. But there never really was. Gavin never told his parents about them.

It felt impossible.

He was a boy that couldn’t hunt, that already came out, that was already on the edge of being deemed worthless and not masculine enough. So he kept his mouth closed. He let the secret of the panic only be told to Elijah, who tried to find different ways to help.

He doesn’t like people. It doesn’t matter who they are. They’re always going to be horrible and cruel.

He barely trusts Connor. But he holds onto his hand while the panic and the paranoia ease away and he can focus on the endless white of the landscape in front of them, the way the sun reflects off the snow and blinds him, the way his head aches because of the brightness. He’s lucky, at least, that he didn’t have a real panic attack. That it was just barely on the surface, coloring his words but not leaving him curled up on the floor crying and holding back stuttered screams.

And he wonders—

When he was standing in that fabric store, when Connor was so close to him, when he leaned up and brushed his lips against Connor’s, if it counted. If that was a real kiss. If the fabric of the scarf between them and the ghostly touch was considered a kiss.

He hopes not.

It would’ve been a terrible first kiss.

But maybe it isn’t the worst thing in the world to like Connor this much, when he holds his hand like this, when he squeezes it to reassure him that they’re going to be okay.

  
  


“It’s for warmth,” Gavin says, tossing a blanket towards him. “So don’t get any funny ideas, okay?”

“You’re the one that knew me for ten minutes and told me to take my pants off,” Connor tilts his head to the side, watching him as he assembles the small space for them to sleep in.

They’ve stopped before the sun has fully started to set. They haven’t gone very far with the snow, with the stopping. Gavin isn’t used to walking this long, and Connor can see how determined he is, how often he needs breaks but won’t ask for them, so he fakes it, just to give Gavin a rest. Tomorrow will be worse. But they stop for the night early on, using the light of the sun to make their way into an abandoned gas station, laying out a blanket to protect from the cold floor of the back office. It’s a cramped and small space, even with moving the desk out of the way. They lay beside each other, Connor’s legs curled up, pressed beside Gavin.

Gavin’s eyes are on the door, open just a sliver to keep an eye out. He’s always so worried, so on edge. It’s hard to blame him. But if he doesn’t relax and rest, they aren’t going to get anywhere.

“I’m not tired,” Gavin whispers.

“Neither am I.”

“Too early,” Gavin says, turning to face him. “Sun goes down too quickly in the winter.”

“You didn’t want to walk in the dark.”

“You can’t see what’s coming at you in the dark, Connor.”

“I know. It’s okay to be scared, Gavin.”

Gavin clears his throat after a moment, “I should go out there. Keep watch. We can switch off.”

“Okay.” Connor says quietly, letting Gavin leave, letting the cold space fill in beside him as Gavin steals a blanket and his bag as he moves to the door.

“And I’m not scared,” he says,

“No. Of course not.”

  
  


He wanders around the gas station trying to find somewhere to sit. By the shelves, maybe, hidden by them? Or behind the countertop, shielded part way? But he can’t see clearly through the windows. They’re too dirty. There’s too much dust and spiderwebs in his way.

Gavin remembers as a kid, he used to go to gas stations all the time. There was one down the road from their house. His brother got a job at one for a brief time, just to prove how much more capable he was: at fourteen, he was ahead two years in school, he got straight A’s, he barely looked back. He might not have had any friends, but he had a job. He could even drive, though not legally, because their dad let him borrow the car to practice. The bonding time that he thought Eli needed to help balance out his intelligence. He was _too smart._ He was _too good of a child._ Though Gavin doesn’t believe if he ever did do something wrong, that Eli would really be punished. They’d be right back to what they thought in the beginning. _We can’t really ground him, he doesn’t have any friends. We can’t take away his allowance—he has a job at the gas station. We can’t interfere with that money. He doesn’t have his license, we can’t very well take the car away from him?_

They could never think of a way to punish Eli but they thought of thousands to punish Gavin.

On the night the gas station was robbed and Eli came home crying and shuddering and hiding in Gavin’s room until he could get his emotions in control, it was the only time he’d seen Eli afraid of facing their parents. It was the only time Eli ever leaned on _him_. Gavin thought maybe, growing up with a brother as smart as Eli, he’d have to beat up bullies. Push them back. Keep them from saying rude things about his brother. But nobody seemed to care, and he knows Eli could take care of himself anyway. Gavin was the useless one. He was a useless son and an even more useless brother.

When Eli decided to keep working at the gas station after the robbery, Gavin had a use. Coming to the place, hiding behind shelves, phone at the ready just in case it happened again. It didn’t. Eli quit a few weeks before his sixteenth birthday to focus on college applications. Gavin kept going. Rearranging candy bars, turning soda bottles around. Sometimes it was fixing the mistakes of others and sometimes it was purposefully messing something up. In those short five minute trips every day, Gavin did nothing but rearrange shit, buy Monsters (the green kind, only) and steal packets of gum.

Oh—

And he kept waiting for Eli to need him again, too.

Gavin steps out into the cold, needing the blistering air to keep the tears at bay. He tells himself it’s because of the dirty windows, because he just wants to know if anyone or anything is out here, but he knows he’s left the safety of the gas station for the fresh air. Not the memory of sitting behind a counter, hidden from the view of customers, turning a lighter over in his hand, teasing his brother about burning the place down. How quickly would they trace it back to him, if he had? Would he have survived longer, stuck inside a prison, where the monsters couldn’t reach? Or would he have died so much quicker, left alone to starve to death with all the other forgotten criminals?

It’s such a stupid thought—

He didn’t burn the place down. Elijah told him to fuck off and stole the lighter back from him. The world ended. Elijah’s missing.

 _Elijah’s not_ **_missing._ **

He _left_ , five years ago.

In the middle of the night.

With a note that said

_I’ll be here five years from now._

Not even an _I’m sorry._ Nothing. Just a location. Just a five year time limit of when he could go. Gavin had thought about leaving before then. Of course he had. Connor can’t say that he didn’t leave almost every day, because he did. But he was too scared. Panicked and terrified. Those monsters in the woods, the people lurking in the shadows. He’s watched them both tear his family apart until it was just him. He can’t trust the sounds of the wind or the animals in the forest.

Something cracks. He didn’t think there was anything else left of him to crack, but it does. A visceral thing that spirals up inside of him, making it hard to breathe. Elijah was all he had left and he abandoned Gavin the moment he could, and he never thought about turning back. Not once. _Five years? FIVE YEARS?_ Five years without the only family he has ever had, the only family left, the only thing that kept him going—

Something hits the back of his head, and he turns sharply, a hand coming up to brush snow away from the back of his neck. Connor’s standing a far bit away. It makes the snowball throw more impressive than he thought. He wants to yell at him, ask what the fuck it was about, but he can’t. It’s nighttime. He’s terrified even a whisper will draw one of those creatures over to him. They’re always so much more active at night, or maybe just his mind is, trying to fill in the blanks of the darkness and real nocturnal creatures in the tree lines.

Connor points down at Gavin’s feet, then beckons him over to him. Gavin’s gaze follows, looking around him. He hadn’t realized he’d left the gas station. He hadn’t realized he walked so far. Back beyond the little bit of trees, out onto the top of the river. Frozen solid, icy underneath his feet. He remembers slipping when he stepped onto it, but he didn’t think anything of it. Too lost in the thought of his brother snatching lighters from his hands and telling him to grow up.

_Something cracked._

Something visceral and real.

“Gavin,” Connor says, his voice quiet, echoing softly around them. A warning. It sounds like there should be more words, but there aren’t. It just ends like that. _Gavin, Gavin, Gavin._

He walks carefully over from the edge of the river to the safe solid ground where Connor is. Once he gets close enough, Connor reaches out, an arm around his waist yanking him off.

“What’s wrong with you?” Connor whispers, not letting him go. “Why would you go out there?”

“I wasn’t paying attention.”

“If the ice cracked, you would’ve fallen through. You would’ve died in that water. You’re such an idiot.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

“You’re lucky I followed you. You know it’s getting close to spring? The ice isn’t as strong as it was before.”

“Are you going to keep harassing me?” Gavin asks, not _are you going to let me go?_ because he likes the feeling of someone holding onto him. Even if it’s Connor. Maybe especially if it’s Connor.

He’s kind. And sweet. And he’s such an asshole sometimes, too, but Gavin knows he deserves that, and he kind of likes having someone tease him back. He likes it not feeling so empty. _It._ The air. Life. Him.

“Yes. Why did you leave the gas station?”

“I needed to think.”

“Out here?”

“How did you even find me?” he says, pushing Connor back, turning towards the building. He’s done. That one moment of comfort wiped away by a question he’s incapable of answering. He can’t tell Connor about the oppressive feeling of his past life. He wouldn’t get it. There’s little point in trying.

“I followed your footsteps,” Connor says, walking beside him. “I heard the bell on the door when you left. I waited for you to come back inside and you didn’t.”

“Worried about me?”

“Yes,” Connor says, his voice angry. “You can’t just leave like that. You said you didn’t make stupid decisions, but look at what you’re doing.”

“Can you stop—”

“What? Wanting you alive?”

“Talking,” Gavin whispers. “Stop talking. Until we get back.”

  
  


They walk back in silence, the bell of the gas station door announces their arrival once more, and they head to the back room again, this time Connor barricades the door, locking them both in. He’s silent as they get ready for bed, Gavin no longer left with the choice of keeping watch.

“You’ll just sneak off again.”

“Fucking Christ, Connor, I won’t sneak off again.”

“I don’t trust you.”

“I didn’t _ask_ you to trust me,” he says, sitting down beside him in the corner. “You just decided to. Don’t act all upset when I do something you don’t want me to. You don’t know me. You don’t control me. You’re a fucking stranger.”

“You’re so stupid.”

“Stop fucking saying that. I get it. I’m an idiot. I’m incapable of doing shit. What do you want from me?”

“I don’t know. To talk.”

“About what?”

“Why were you on the ice, Gavin?” he asks quietly. “You said you didn’t know but—”

“I’m not lying to you. It was an accident. I didn’t—I wouldn’t—” he sighs, frustrated. “What, you care about me or something?”

“Yes.”

“During a time like this?” Gavin asks, gesturing his hand out to the empty room. “We’re hiding in a fucking disgusting gas station trying to make it through the night. And you’re going to let yourself care about someone? I’m just going to die on you, Connor. Or leave. Eventually.”

“And I can’t care about you in the meantime?” he asks.

Gavin shakes his head, “Waste of time. Waste of energy. Just a fucking waste.”

“I don’t think you’re a waste, Gavin.”

Gavin meets his gaze finally, the anger drawn out of him, replaced with sadness, with the kind of sadness that comes with defeat and exhaustion, too. “I don’t think you are, either. But we can at least be smart, yeah? You think you care about me, Connor, but you don’t, you’re just happy to be around someone again.”

Connor shakes his head, “You’ll believe whatever makes you feel better, huh?”

“What?”

“I don’t want to argue, Gavin. Just let it go.”

“You whisper something under your breath about me and expect me to just let it go?”

Connor turns on his side away from him, curling up as small as he can manage. He doesn’t want to argue. Gavin doesn’t want to argue. But there’s nothing to say. Gavin said it outright. It hurts too much to care about people at the end of the world. They die. They leave.

But he doesn’t care about Gavin because he’s the first person that’s treated him with some semblance of kindness since he escaped the camp. He cares about Gavin because he—

Because he’s annoying. And stupid. But for some reason that’s charming. For some reason he’s funny, too. And he’s nice. Caring, though he likely doesn’t see it. The care he treated Connor with when he was healing—

He likes him. He wishes he didn’t. If Connor could change anything about their situation right now, it would be that he didn’t care about Gavin at all.

  
  


They lay in the dark beside each other. Aware of how close they are. _For warmth._ For comfort, really. Just to feel a little less alone. Despite the freezing cold, the kind that burns Connor’s lungs like it’s made of fire, he feels better sleeping beside Gavin than when he did when he was left alone in that cabin. He still has the gun, hidden inside of his bag. He doesn’t want to use it and he doesn’t want to need it, but he can’t quite let it go, even if he thinks Gavin would be better to have it. He needs the protection of it. He needs to be in control of it.

“Are you awake Connor?” Gavin whispers.

“Yes.”

“Can I tell you something? Since it’s the middle of the night? That’s when people do their confessions, right? When it’s too dark to see each other?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

Gavin is quiet for a moment. The dark filling in the space around them. The wind whipping around the building howling to take it away.

“You were right, before,” he says, his voice so quiet, so soft, Connor moves a little closer to hear him. “I don’t want to die. And sometimes I wish I did so I didn’t—have to try so hard not to. I won’t go back out on the ice. I won’t disappear like that. But you have to believe me when I say I didn’t go out there hoping to die or anything.”

“Okay. I believe you.”

Connor turns on his side, curling up closer against Gavin’s side, an arm around his waist. It’s the best he can provide for a hug, and Gavin doesn’t shake him off. It makes him steal a little bit closer.

“Gavin?”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t sound like it.”

“And what about you?”

“What about me?”

“You don’t sound fine, either.”

“It’s the end of the world,” Connor says with a small smile. “What’s there to feel fine about?”

Gavin’s hand touches his arm lightly. And the way he looks at Connor, hidden behind his scarf and his hood, Connor has an answer.

 _What’s there to feel fine about when everything is destroyed?_ When there’s nothing left but the eventual promise that they will all die, and likely a gruesome or painful death at that?

This.

Another person to share it with.


	3. Zlatko

He has a dream about Connor.

It isn’t sexual. But it isn’t innocent, either. It’s confusing. It’s a blur that passes by. The kind of dream that’s left vague and unexplained but threaded deep with emotion and connection Gavin doesn’t have the right to feel. Nothing really happens in the dream, but there’s so much that when he wakes, it feels like something has cut him open and either tore out his insides or filled him up too full to breathe properly. He lays there, staring at the ceiling, the soft blue glow of daybreak peeking in around the door to the office. Connor’s arm is still around him, but he’s moved closer to Gavin’s side. His face is pressed against his shoulder, his entire body curved against his side, legs tangled together.

Gavin doesn’t need a dream to tell him that he likes Connor. He knows he likes Connor. He knows he likes him in a way that means he wants more. He’d often have these kinds of dreams. The kind that make him think of a future, of the potential of a life beyond. The thing he holds out hope for. That the strangers that came to his cabin don’t stay just long enough to make Gavin care before ripping it away from him when they leave for their real friends, their real family. He knows Connor is going to leave. He knows they won’t stay together forever. And sometimes he can only be grateful that he doesn’t think Connor falls into that small category of people that he’s crossed paths with that are cruel and vicious and have caused more harm than the monsters.

But it’s hard to separate the fact that he’s been isolated and lonely and given one person.

Does he like the fact he isn’t alone, or does he really like Connor?

He barely knows him.

He doesn’t know what caused those scars. He doesn’t know if there’s a cruel history to why Connor didn’t want Gavin to touch him before. He doesn’t know anything about angels and he doesn’t know anything about the monsters and he doesn’t know if he wants to know. But he knows in his dream version of them that Connor’s lips are soft and their hands fit perfectly together.

And he knows for certain that he doesn’t like the feeling of being this helpless to how hard and how heavy he’s falling right now.

He turns to face Connor and he watches his face scrunch up, his hand leaving Gavin’s side to brush the sleep from his eyes as he looks up at him.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Morning.”

“Morning.”

“Are you going to repeat everything I say?”

“No,” he tries not to smile. He tries not to think that in his dream, he would’ve woken up every day like this, with Connor curled beside him, with a slight annoyance at being woken so early.  _ Fuck.  _ “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It’s fine. We should get going, though, right?”

Gavin nods and the two of them separate from each other slowly, settling into silence as they check and recheck supplies. Connor leaves Gavin’s side to survey the perimeter while Gavin sets out food, deciding how much they can eat and how much they can save.

It’s such a smaller number than he expected. The winter was harsh, making the canned goods he had feel useless. They could stay and hunt, but setting up traps or trying to find an animal in the woods… it would take precious time. He needs to get to Elijah. He doesn’t want to waste half a day or more here. They need to get moving. He’s already so much slower with Connor at his side.

At the thought of him, like he’s being summoned, the door opens again, Connor slipping inside.

“It’s snowing pretty heavily out there,” Connor says. “Not a blizzard, but close enough.”

Gavin sighs. Just another reason to stay here until it passes. But he won’t even be able to hunt like this. Connor watches him as he packs up the food, getting to his feet. He sees the look Connor is giving him. Eying the food that would sustain one person’s journey but not two. Not this far. They’ll barely make it halfway there like this, and only then if they eat small portions. He feels like someone came in in the night and stole his food and ran away again, but he knows it’s not true. He just didn’t think this through like he should’ve. He should’ve spent the winter finding a way to dry out and preserve the meat and eating less at the cabin. Instead, Gavin spent it huddled up inside of that car terrified and alone and half-wishing he was dead.

“We can’t walk far in that storm,” Connor says, moving out of his way to look through the iced and dirty windows.

He was right. It’s coming down hard. They’ll probably barely be able to see, and it’ll likely pick up and just become worse the further they go. Especially if they’re headed into it and not away.

“We can’t stay here.”

“Why not? Just until it passes?” he asks. “You’re worried about the supplies, right? But it’ll last us a day—”

“It’ll last us a day but a storm might last three or four.”

“It’s supposed to be close to spring time.”

“When has that ever stopped the weather from fucking people over?” Gavin replies. “We need to keep moving. There’s a city close by. We should investigate it and find shelter there.”

“It’s freezing outside,” Connor whispers. “We could get hypothermia.”

“I’ve had worse. I’ve survived worse.”

“Doesn’t mean you need to survive this. We should—”

“I’m the leader,” Gavin says, cutting him off. “We’re going. So you can stay if you want, but you’re going to give me my pack and I’d like to try to see you live off nothing.”

Connor’s jaw clenches and he looks away to the windows, fists curled at his side, “You’re such an asshole.”

He knows. But he also knows if they stay, they’re just as likely to die. He’s seen storms like this pick up and stay for a week. He’s seen the snow pile up so high it’s barricaded them into a building and they’ve had to wait it out until it melted. He’s not doing that. He’s not dying here.

And if it takes being a little manipulative and being a jerk about it, he’ll do it.

“It’ll be slippery,” Gavin says, pulling his gloves on. “So if you start to fall, grab me.”

“And bring you down with me?”

“It’ll help you slow down. Break the fall a little bit. Won’t hurt as bad. And you might not bring me down, anyway. I just don’t want you cracking your head open or breaking your tailbone or some shit, okay?”

“Okay,” Connor says. “Let’s go then.”

  
  


They walk in silence like they did the day before. Connor reaches forward and takes Gavin’s hand three times before he finally stays there. Pretending that by doing so he isn’t falling. He doesn’t know why he cares. Gavin is horrible. But he thinks about the night before, how quiet and afraid his voice was when he admitted he didn’t want to die. And what a dangerous thing to admit when the world is crushing them like this. What a dangerous thing to say when at every turn something is trying to slaughter them. It is so much easier to live in a world like this when the apathy towards one’s own survival is at an all time low.

And now they’re walking in silence, only accompanied by the howling wind that whips snow around them angry and vicious.

It’s strange, being unable to talk. Connor isn’t someone that likes to talk nonstop, but—

Before, at the camp, it was never a worry. Him and some of the others would stay up whispering back and forth to each other about things that happened during the day. Their worries, their hopes, the personal drama of a few others that they didn’t interact with as often. And then the people in his cabin disappeared one by one, fleeing the oppression of the camp and in turn their absence were taken out on him.

He doesn’t know silence or loneliness like this. He was alone after his own escape, but it wasn’t as if it lasted for long. Not long like Gavin’s isolation. He never even left the walls of the camp. He was raised in the angel schools and then shipped directly to an encampment a few hours away just as the world started to fall apart. Ever since, he stayed there. They didn’t trust him with a gun and it wasn’t as if he wanted one. Some of the others, especially newcomers to their camp, always thought there was a story behind it. There wasn’t. Not really. He refused to do his part when it came time to train with the rifles and pistols and that was it. He looked at them and he knew what they were. Weapons. He held one and it felt like it weighed a hundred pounds or more. Like the weight of a body, not something to protect himself with.

He squeezes his hand tightly without thinking and Gavin pauses, looking back to him. He wants to take the scarf off. The layers of fabric that separate them from each other. He wants to see what expression he has on his face. He wants to know what he’s thinking. This silence is killing him and all Connor really wants is something to take his attention away from his memories before.

Nothing happened to him.

But the teachers held a gun on his head and said they’d pull the trigger because his refusal to use a gun assured his death right then and there. But he did hold a gun. He took it from Gavin. He assured his safety. He never would’ve used it but—

Maybe he would have, if Gavin was the kind of threat they were taught humans were. Selfish and insane creatures willing to toss anybody to the wolves to save their own skin.

Maybe he would have if the schools hadn’t instilled in him one thing and one thing alone: a person’s desire to live is so much stronger than they will ever believe until it’s tested.

_ Would he have pulled the trigger? _

He doesn’t know.

  
  


Gavin creeps a little closer, his voice quiet, nearly swept away by the storm.

“There’s a store in the distance. I don’t know if you can see it. We can rest there. Scavenge for stuff.”

Connor nods in reply, and Gavin hesitates there, close beside him for a second.

And Connor—

Connor doesn’t know why he cares.

Why he would protect Gavin so fiercely.

Maybe it’s because he knows. Whatever is waiting for him at Jericho, whatever friends he has that are still alive, whatever plans they have for survival—

It doesn’t really mean much to him anymore. It never really has.

  
  


The hardware shop is a large, vast thing, though they can’t reach most of it. The shelves have long since fallen down in what looks like a bomb explosion. The roof has collapsed in on some places, but the walls shield them from the storm. Not enough to pull down their face covers, but enough to feel a little bit of warmth come back into their bodies again. Connor wants to start a fire, properly get feeling back into his fingertips, but he knows they won’t stay that long.

But he keeps glancing at Gavin as he wanders through the empty shelves. He has to be in worse condition than Connor is. He has angel blood in him. It helps with a layer of protection against the elements. Like invisible armor instead of skin. But Gavin? He’s human. He’s weak.

Connor leaves Gavin to his own exploration, picking through the little food that’s in the store. Expired candy bars and soda by the checkout lanes. He takes what he can, not sure what will still be good. He was never good at guessing that kind of thing. What’s good past the date and what’ll just make someone sick beyond the risk and need for sustenance. He might be fine, but Gavin is another story entirely, and Connor can’t risk getting Gavin sick. There’s no medicine to make him better.

Though, he supposes there will always be one thing. Last ditch effort. Not tried but likely in theory.

“Connor,” Gavin says, his voice barely loud enough to carry toward him. “I have something.”

He moves over to his side, finding him in an aisle with a few scattered supplies still left. Gavin holds up two bundles of fabric before tossing one towards him. It’s heavy, weighty. Too big to fit into a backpack.

“Put it on,” Gavin says.

Connor turns it over, finding sleeves and a hood, “Are these coats?”

“You act like you’ve never seen one before.”

“Just surprised they’re still here,” Connor says, dropping his bag to the floor and pulling the coat on over his existing one. It’s big enough to fit over it, but it’s still snug, restricting the movements of his arms, but he’s instantly warmer, and the hood is big enough to pull over his other one, with a little strap that velcros over his face.

“There’s also some canned food over there,” Gavin says, nodding towards a shelf on the other side. “I think someone was hiding out here.”

“You think they’ll come back?”

Gavin shakes his head, kneeling down to loosen the straps of his backpack enough to pull over the new coat, “There’s dust on everything. They haven’t been here in a while. Probably died when they were out searching for supplies.”

Or this is a back up place. Not their original hideout. Still…

Connor always feels weird when it comes to this. Taking supplies from someone else’s home. Like stealing their belongings and leaving them to die. But they don’t have a choice. It’s Connor and Gavin versus strangers that are likely dead.

They take the few bullets they find and the cans weigh them down, but it’s worth it. They find snowboarding goggles in another section of the store, replacing their sunglasses with them and tuck new scarves around their necks. They’re bulky and weighty, like monsters now, but it’ll help get them through the snow. It’d be helpful if they had better boots, but they don’t find anything. That would be too lucky for them. There’s a balance in everything they do. Not just with their luck—it’ll surely balance itself out soon enough—but with the supplies. There’s a give and take to everything. Canned goods are heavy, these coats make it hard for them to move their arms, and they’re long enough that they go to their knees. It’ll make running difficult.

Give and take.

  
  


They head towards the back door, both of them needed to help push a vending machine out from in front of the back doors. The noise of it is loud and grating, but cutting through the back will save them more time than wandering back outside into the cold again. Neither of them need to argue about it to point out the logic in their plan to cut through the city this way. Both of them have weighed the dangers versus safety of this passage.

But still. When they move the vending machine, Gavin grits his teeth as the back door opens and they step out into the loading docks. He holds up a hand to Connor, keeping him back as he scans the place. A few trucks scattered here and there, most of them with the doors on the back pulled up and nothing inside but junk and snow. He waves Connor out after deciding the place is safe and they pick up their pace, side by side as they move along to the street that’ll lead them back to the city.

Connor takes his hand again, which he’s grateful for. He likes holding onto someone. He likes knowing that Connor is always here, beside him. That he didn’t make him up and that Connor isn’t lying dead somewhere fifty feet behind him. And his hand is a little bit warm. Not enough to mean anything, but enough that it saves his right hand from the ice cold air. He was hoping to find better gloves in there, but he knows enough that the better gloves mean being completely unable to draw his gun and aim it.

When he was younger, his dad scavenged a pair of oven mitts and had him and Eli wear them when they were outside, tending to the cabin. That was when they decided despite the massive amount of yarn they continued to get from the craft stores in the city should all be devoted to sweaters and clothes. Only one of the scarves that he has now is made from his mother. She never could get gloves right anyway. Mittens, maybe, but gloves proved too difficult. And he lost the first hat she made him and it was difficult to try and explain how much worse it was to lose something she spent time and materials crafting than something just found in a store. They have a handful of beanies, but they were never as thick or as good as the ones she made.

He shakes the memory from his head. He doesn’t like thinking about her. He doesn’t like thinking about what happened to her even more so. And it always leads there. Thinking of her always brings back this pain. It should’ve dulled by now. It shouldn’t be so heavy and suffocating, but his heart aches with such a ferocity it feels like his rib cage is shattering with it.

Gavin’s hand tightens around Connor’s and when Connor glances over to him, he thinks despite the fact their faces are entirely covered, Connor is smiling at him. He doesn’t know why. Maybe it’s because Connor just seems like somebody that smiles easily. Maybe it’s soft and maybe it’s a little sad, but he smiles and it’s enough to make Gavin wish he remembered how to do that, too.

He’s busy looking at Connor when he hears it.

Not a roar or a growl. Nothing monstrous. Nothing horrifying.

They never start off horrifying.

Just the snap of a twig. The crunch of snow.

And he knows.

  
  


They’re running. They’re trying to run. It’s not easy to run in a foot of snow and these new coats, but they try nonetheless. Connor heard it, too. They both caught onto it at the same time, and even if they hadn’t, the way their bodies both froze, their hands between them freezing the exact same way with fear would’ve tipped them off. And if that hadn’t, the sound of the creature barreling out from the tree line to their right a moment later would’ve been enough for Connor to catch on. So Connor doesn’t see it, but he hears it in the woods and he hears it chasing after them and he hates how slow they are running right now, how hard it is to trample through the streets like this. 

_ It’s supposed to be near spring.  _ There shouldn’t be this much snow. It’s going to kill them. Not by the cold but by grabbing at them like quick sand.

Gavin is quicker than he is, and their hands broke apart when they started to sprint away, but even as Connor tries to take the same footsteps as Gavin did, he’s not as fast as him. There’s this fear locking him up, pulling him down. He is being choked by it. Absolute terror. A reminder of the attack before. The one he almost didn’t survive.

_ GO. _

_ RUN FASTER. _

But he can’t will himself to go any quicker. His lungs burn with that bright cold air and he feels tears stinging his eyes as he stumbles and slips on the ice, falling forward as the road dips down into a hill. It’s too steep for him to get back up properly, and he rolls a few yards further down as the thing gets closer, the growl it releases some mix of lion and human.

He hears a gun go off, then another. A different one. Lower, further away. His arms come up over his face to hide his sight from whatever’s happening, too terrified to get up. Too scared to do anything. He was a horrible soldier for the angels. They hated him for it. He never wanted to fight, no matter how many times they forced a gun into his hands, no matter how often they told him it was necessary. He spent his entire life learning combat and various weapons and it did nothing to quell his distaste for violence.

“Connor!”

Gavin’s voice. Distant. Terrified. Breaking.

He doesn’t move. He’s too scared to open his eyes. Like a child again, hiding under the covers while a thunderstorm raged on.

_ It’s just a storm. It’s fine. It’s okay. _

He’s so useless. He’s so stupid.

“Connor,” the voice whispers, hands on his arms, pulling them away from his face. “Come on. Get up. It’s dead but others might be coming. We have to go.”

He opens his eyes, up at Gavin’s figure above him. Shadowy and dark when the world is such a blank white-gray around him. He wants to scream. He knows it’s Gavin’s face and his voice, but he’s thinking about the teachers at school hitting him hard with whips when he refused the gun they put in his hands. He thinks about the one that armed the revolver with one bullet and gave him a singular chance of whether or not he could survive the chance game he was playing. The bullets were always blank, but when it went off, when he heard the fake crack against the silent room—

It only meant more pain.

_ So useless. So stupid. _

“Come on,” Gavin says quietly. “You can walk, can’t you?”

Connor nods, but he isn’t sure why. It’s such a lie. His legs feel like jelly as Gavin pulls him up, pulling him back into the now that’s just as terrifying as the memories flooding his head. A thousand bad things at once. Like his life is flashing before his eyes but only choosing the nightmares and none of the good.

But what even is the good?

The times at the cabin joking with Gavin? The times at the camp when they stayed up with hushed whispers teasing about the gossip of who’s got a crush on who? He never met his mother or his father. He was born into a school that shoved these lessons down his throat of who to kill and never to spare.

“Come on,” Gavin repeats a third time. It’s not helping. The words aren’t helping. But hearing Gavin’s voice is, and Connor uses it to help guide him on their race down the street.

He doesn’t know where they’re going, but the two of them duck into a building further down the street, the door closing behind them. When Connor turns, he sees Gavin helping someone push a barricade in front of the door.

“I don’t think there’s any in the city, but gun shots are loud,” the other says, pulling his hood down, his goggles up. “You two should’ve been more careful.”

They should’ve. They shouldn’t have made that noise at the store. It’s probably what drew one of them closer. It’s all Connor can think of. To blame himself instead of entertaining the idea that a monster might be lurking in the woods already. They could’ve even stayed at that store until the storm settled down. Connor should’ve fought for that idea. The food they found would’ve let them hunker down there for at least a day or two.

“Thank you,” Connor says quietly, forcing the words out as he stands up. “For helping.”

The man shoulders his gun before nodding towards the doorway, “That won’t hold them. We need to get down to the safe room.”

Gavin takes a step closer to Connor, lifting his chin up. He hadn’t realized that his scarf had slipped down, freed from protecting his lower face. “You’re bleeding.”

_ Bleeding.  _ He feels a wave of panic rise in his stomach. If this guy saw his blood, he’d know he wasn’t human. Gavin tucks the scarf back up over his face, his head shaking slightly. Connor doesn’t know if it’s a secret message at all, but he doubts the stranger would’ve offered to shelter them if he thought Connor was an angel.

Unless he is, too.

And how is Connor supposed to know? Without their halos implanted in their temples, they can’t tell each other apart from the humans. They’re never in tune to their own DNA. They’re in tune to the electric waves signaled between them.

“I’ll be fine,” Connor says quietly, turning to the stranger. “Who are you?”

“Zlatko.”

Connor nods, “Connor.”

“I gathered that,” he looks to Gavin. “You?”

“Gavin.”

“We need to get downstairs,” he repeats from before. “I have a better barrier there. Some food. You can wait out the storm. Or you can leave. There’s another exit up the second floor. Jump from here to the next building over.”

Connor’s heart is still racing in his chest, his lungs still needing a chance to breathe. Staying here means a rest, even a short one. They have guns. Zlatko isn’t going to be able to kill them when it’s two against one.

“Okay.”

  
  


The two of them sit by themselves while Zlatko turns a burner on and starts to heat up a can of beans over it. Connor sits so that his back is to him, trying his best to hide his face. They both take off their coats, warmed by a heater running on solar power. Zlatko has described the set up to them, but Connor was barely listening. The cords dangling above them in the boards that make up the ceiling run up to the rooftop where he has a few panels set up. The storm doesn’t supply the best energy, but it’s enough for a few dim lights and enough warmth that they can shed their gear.

Gavin sits across from him now, dropping the corner of a rag into his jar of water and dabbing it against Connor’s lip. It’s ice cold, but it barely registers when his skin hasn’t soaked up the new heat yet.

“Hold still,” Gavin says quietly.

“I’m trying.”

“You keep squirming away. It doesn’t hurt that bad. It’s not even alcohol.”

He knows. But every time Gavin touches it to clean the blood away, he remembers rolling down the hill. He remembers the monster just behind them. He remembers cowering in fear and thinking  _ is this really how it ends?  _ And then thinking  _ of course it is. How else could it? _

He doesn’t remember hitting his face on anything at all, but Gavin tells him there’s a bruise forming on his cheek. His nose was bleeding, but it’s stopped since then. Not a break, but it’s still sore. And there’s a nasty cut on his mouth. He can taste the blood now. It’s the only thing sensation that really registers beyond just a surface level thing. It’s one thing to be chased by monsters and know how close he came to death, it’s another to have a bruise, and it’s an entirely separate thing to have both of these along with metal on his tongue.

“Hey,” Gavin whispers. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I’m fine.”

Gavin sets the rag down, running his finger along his lower lip, “It’s okay to be scared.”

“Shut up,” Connor murmurs.

“I thought I was supposed to be the mean one.”

“Shut up,” he repeats, and when Gavin goes to move away he holds him there, holds his hand against his face so he doesn’t stop that gentle trace of his mouth.

They only stay like that for a moment. Gavin needs to finish cleaning his cut, and this time it does sting worse, and Gavin has to hold a hand on the back of his neck, his thumb pressed over Connor’s throat almost like he’s choking him. It’s not comfortable, but it’s not threatening. There’s no fear like he had the first time when Gavin helped him with his wounds.

And why is it always like this? Gavin helping _ him? _

Gavin is the human. He’s the one that’s supposed to be weak and fragile.

Connor’s just stupider than he thought. A thousand times more so. He never had to survive out here. He never had to be alone. He’s pathetic.

“It’ll heal up fine,” Gavin says, folding up the rag and tucking it away, hiding the blue blood stains from Zlatko’s prying eyes. “You’ll be okay.”

“I know I will. I told you.”

“Shut up,” he says. “God. I’m trying to be your nurse.”

“I don’t need you to be,” Connor says, reaching forward to poke him in the side. He’s just teasing him now to change the mood and it’s only worth it when Gavin smiles back at him.

“Here,” Zlatko says, holding out two small bowls to them.

It’s not good food, but it’s better than the cold vegetables they’ve been eating. Connor turns away from Gavin and Gavin moves a few feet away to eat in silence. Connor watches him eat. Slow bites to make the food feel like it lasts longer. He bites the end of the fork and it slowly leaves his mouth as he glances back at Connor, his eyebrows knitting together.

He’s so sleepy. So tired. He wants to curl up against the wall and sleep. His body aches with the cold and the run and the lack of a real bed. His eyelids droop as he sets his bowl aside, leaning against the wall. He vaguely registers the sound of the wooden bowl clattering to the floor. He can’t move. He’s too tired to move, and he’s too exhausted to care. Gavin will carry him to a proper place, probably. Hopefully. He likes the idea of Gavin’s arms around him, holding him tight. Taking him someplace safe.

“Connor?”

  
  


Connor wakes to the sound of a plea. A quiet choked sob cut off by a sound he recognizes in an instant. His eyes fly open, taking in his surroundings, looking around for wherever it came from. He knows a silencer when he hears one. The angels have them on all their weapons. He was taught how to make one from scavenged supplies when this all started.

The dim light does little to help him find what’s happening, and he tries to reach forward to pull himself up when he finds his hands are tied to the post behind his back. He wiggles against it, his head foggy with sleep.

Not sleep.

Drugs.

His eyes sweep the room slowly, finding a body beside him. He recognizes it as Gavin’s slower than he cares to admit, but his thoughts are moving too slow to keep up with him. He pulls his leg out from under him, kicking softly against Gavin’s leg. 

_ Is he dead? _

The body moves, a quiet groan. Alive, then.

_ Thank God. _

“Oh, you’re awake.”

Connor looks for the voice, finding the figure moving away from a table towards them, “That was faster than expected. I can never get the dosage quite right on you bird freaks. And him… well…”

Connor looks to Gavin, tries to see in the dim light what happened to him.

“He’ll be fine,” Zlatko says. “Don’t worry about it.”

_ Don’t worry about it? He just  _ **_killed_ ** _ someone. _

Connor opens his mouth to speak, finding that his lips can’t move. Everything is so sluggish to him, he hadn’t noticed the duct tape over his mouth or the feeling of fabric on his tongue. Gagged so he can’t scream. The muffled sounds of whatever he tries won’t be heard. By who? By what? Is he just trying to keep himself safe from whatever monsters lurk above him, or does he just not want to hear someone beg for their life like before?

Zlatko bends down in front of him and Connor tries to kick at him, flailing uselessly. He’s too far away and Zlatko shakes his head, gaze full of pity while he pulls a knife from his belt.

“Here’s my deal with you. Just a simple nod or shake of the head will do. Tell me if your friend here is like you. If he isn’t, I’ll let him go.”

Connor doesn’t believe him. This is some sick trick. It has to be.

He shakes his head, knowing that this means nothing, because Zlatko is already moving toward Gavin, the blade reaching out to his cheek. Zlatko grabs a handful of Gavin’s hair, pulling his face so that the cut along his cheek can be shown to Connor. The red blood starts to blossom along it, dripping down slowly. The only kindness here is that the cut isn’t too deep.

“Good,” Zlatko says, stepping back. “You didn’t lie to me.”

_ Now let him go. _

_ Please. _

“But… he seems to like you quite a bit,” Zlatko says, replacing his knife on his belt. “He’d probably come back for you. Or for revenge.”

Connor feels a sob build up in his throat. His hands moving uselessly against the restraints as tears fill his eyes. Someone is already dead. Some stranger they didn’t see. His feet kick like a child throwing a tantrum against the cement.

“Calm down, I’ll make it quick. One bullet to the head and he won’t feel anything. He’s still out of it.”

He’s not, though.

Connor can tell by the way Gavin’s chest is moving. He’s waking up. He’ll still see the gun, even if he’s too delirious to know what’s happening. He’ll still know and it’ll be Connor’s fault.

Zlatko smiles lightly as he leans against the table behind him. White table cloth stained blue. Connor’s eyes find the color and latch onto it. Like the handkerchief that Gavin used to clean his face with. A thousand times bigger. So much more blood, spilled onto the floor, splattered against the light hanging above it.

His sobs turn into horror-filled. Not just for Gavin but for the dozens of people like him that came before. Dozens or hundreds of his own people laying on that table, cut open, mutilated. Something. Were they alive? They must’ve been. Zlatko didn’t kill him yet. And the way he phrased Gavin’s return before— _ come back for you.  _ Like Connor would be a prisoner and not a corpse.

But when they came down to the basement, all Connor saw was a few shelves and cement walls. He didn’t see this room. Is he hiding other places? Is the second floor a bunch of cages with his people gagged and bound, left to freeze in the winter storm raging above?

“You and your people destroyed this world,” Zlatko says quietly. “All over. Thousands of coordinated attacks against humans that didn’t even know you existed. Trying to eradicate us. Maybe I should keep him alive just to torture you the way you tortured us.”

This isn’t about humans versus angels. Connor knows that. Whatever Zlatko thinks he’s saying, he’s wrong. Gavin is human. Unless his involvement with Connor is enough to make him a traitor.

“Did you know this would happen?” Zlatko asks. His voice is flat and bored, like he’s said this question a hundred times. “Did you know that you would unleash those monsters on us? Is it what you wanted, the world in disarray?”

_ No. _

But he can’t say that. He can’t say anything. He closes his eyes, trying not to see the blue blood splattered around the room. Trying not to think of the cut on Gavin’s cheek. Wishing they didn’t come here, wishing the monster had killed Connor first. Maybe Gavin would’ve been let go, then.

He hears someone move and his eyes open, watching Zlatko shake his head as he moves down the line, past Gavin. He crouches in front of someone further away. A third person that Connor hadn’t registered was here before. Just as quiet as Gavin was.

“You’re innocent in this,” Zlatko says quietly. “But you’ve seen too much, haven’t you?”

He leans forward, trying to see whoever it is. He sees legs move, kicking at the floor and the space in front of Zlatko like Connor had. But Zlatko is too close this time, and the foot lands squarely against his jaw, sending him backwards. His hand reaches up, touching the space where the kick landed.

“Fucking cunt,” he says. “Was going to let you die quickly, but maybe you deserve to suffer just as much as they do.”

Connor tries his restraints again, struggling against the metal pole, the zip ties digging into his hands. He doesn’t want to listen to another person die. He doesn’t want to hear that gun go off again. The plastic bites into his skin, his shoulders bending backwards uncomfortably. He can’t get free. It’s useless. Zlatko tied him up tight. But he doesn’t stop fighting. He doesn’t care how useless it is. He’s not going to give up.

Zlatko moves towards the shelf on the other side of the room, picking up a metal bat as he steps back towards the stranger. He pauses, looking back to Connor before coming to his side.

“I need you to shut the fuck up,” he says, and the bat slams down against his face. His vision goes dark, blurring into black before he can blink it away.

  
  


He wakes to a scream. Muffled and quiet and so familiar. He wakes to a scream that reminds him of his mother’s. For a moment, he’s confused. Gavin is in his twenties again, tied to a chair, watching a fist land, watching a bat hit hard against an arm.

But that’s not how it happened.

That’s not how his mother was killed.

He blinks away the fog of the drugs. The thing he tasted far too late. The thing he recognized overcoming Connor _ far too late. _ His head is killing him. He remembers that, at least. Getting hit in the head with the butt of a rifle. He hadn’t eaten quite enough to knock him out, just enough to make him too weak to understand what was going to happen next. Enough to not let the fear register completely.

And now he’s here. Tied up. He blinks again, trying to get the last remnants of his memory out of his vision, but it won’t leave. It won’t leave and it takes him a second longer to register that the woman on the table isn’t his mother at all. She’s not white, her hair is too dark, she’s far too young.

She’s been strapped down, her arms up over her head and bound at the end of it, her legs restrained in the same manner. He moves against his own binds, trying to pull away before his gaze shifts around him, finding Connor to his left.

Alive, by the looks of the rise and fall of his chest, but there’s blood staining his face and it makes Gavin recognize a sting on his own. He looks back to the woman, tears streaming down her cheeks as Zlatko leaves the room. He looks past her, towards a body laying on the floor behind the table. Just feet. But Connor is next to him. Connor is okay.  _ Connor is alive. _

Gavin tries to recall the things him and his brother learned when they were kids. Playing cops and robbers in the garage when his dad wasn’t home. Stealing his zip ties and seeing who could get out of them. He remembers after his mother and father died, the same feeling on his wrists. Plastic keeping him in place. Elijah had cut him free then, but Gavin still remembers how to do it.

He bends his hands outwards, forcing the plastic until his shoulders protest the pain so much he has to stop. He won’t do anyone good if he dislocates a shoulder but he’ll never forgive himself if he didn’t try, even if it meant unimaginable pain. He watches the doorway where Zlatko disappeared through. Takes a moment to breathe. Tries again. It takes him two more attempts before he feels the zip ties snap and the force of it makes something in his right shoulder pop, his knuckles drag against the cement hard enough to draw blood.

Gavin stumbles to his feet, his hand moving to his right shoulder, pressing against it to test the damage. It hurts. His hand hurts. His entire arm feels uselessly in pain.

He glances to the woman, who is quiet, but looks at him with pleading eyes, and he looks back to Connor laying unconscious in his spot. He hopes he’s been asleep this whole time. He hopes Connor didn’t have to see any of this at all. He moves slowly towards the shelf, trying his best to ignore the corpse lying between it and him. He reaches for one of the thirteen knives, trying his best to cut the woman free rather than fuck with the locks. He thinks of her as his best bet, being that she’s awake, being that she seems to have her wits about her when he still hardly does.

He moves to her feet as she sits up, pulling the duct tape off her mouth. Gavin hadn’t done that. He hadn’t thought about it. A waste of time in the midst of waiting for Zlatko to come back.

Zlatko—

He turns around to the door as the woman gets up from the bed, reaching for a wrench on one of the shelves. He stumbles back as he sees Zlatko’s form come back to the room. The woman lurches forward past Gavin, hitting Zlatko hard with the wrench. She doesn’t stop after he falls to the floor. She keeps hitting him with it, more sickening cracks that turn from thuds to wet stomach-churning sounds the longer she goes. He moves out of the way, standing confused and useless as Zlatko hits the floor, blood spilling from him and coating the floor.

_ Connor. _

Something pulls him back as he turns around, moving to Connor’s side and cutting through the zip ties. He touches his face, looking for the source of the wound on his head. He tries to remember what he was told by his dad. Head wounds bleed a lot, but they’re usually not deep. Connor is likely okay, but what the fuck would Gavin know? He doesn’t have any type of machine that would tell him whether or not Connor’s brain is bleeding or if he has a concussion. He just has to have luck and hope. Hope that whatever angel blood does will heal him.

He pulls Connor’s duct tape loose from his mouth, running his hand over his lip before pulling his own off, tossing it to the side.

“Connor?” he whispers quietly. “Connor, I need you to wake up. Don’t do this again. Wake up. Please.”

He doesn’t get anything in response and his stomach turns. There’s a sound of metal hitting the floor and he looks back at the woman wiping blood from her face as she turns to face him.

“He’s fucking dead.”

Yeah, Gavin gathered that about five hits in.

“We need to get out of here,” Gavin says.

She nods, “Can you carry him?”

He searches Connor’s face, waiting for an answer from him, hoping Connor will wake up and take care of this himself. He won’t be able to carry him with his busted shoulder.

“No,” he says quietly. “When I was breaking the zip ties—”

“Dislocated your shoulder?”

He nods, “Do you know how to fix it?”

“I do, but it’ll still hurt. You won’t be able to carry him regardless.”

He nods again, trying to find words. She doesn’t look weak, but she’s a stranger and the last stranger he trusted shot somebody and tried to kill them but she also beat him to death with a wrench, so he doesn’t really know who to trust here.

“Fine,” she says. “I’ll do it.”

“I didn’t ask you—”

“I know you didn’t. You didn’t need to. We need to get out of here.”

_ We.  _ Like they are a team already. “Why?”

“Because you freed me. This is me paying you back. Let’s go.”

  
  


They gather their things from Zlatko’s place, pushing aside shelves that have barricaded and concealed parts of the basement from them. She finds her backpack next to Connor and Gavin’s and a fourth one belonging to the other stranger. He assumes it was her friend the way she holds it. Or maybe she’s just kind enough to care about strangers despite the fact one just tried to kill them. She takes the last pack and the other coat, pulling it on over hers despite the fit being much tighter than Gavin’s own second coat. His shoulder fucking kills him when he puts on both of the coats, but he grimaces through the pain and toughs it out. The bag is a thousand times worse, the weight of it seemingly shifted all the way to the right.

But he has to do this. He has to. He’s lived through worse pain. He’s done much worse. He’s survived worse.

He has to dress Connor, which is fine. He’s more worried about the head wound. He doesn’t know what to do about it, so he takes a few bandages from Zlatko’s kit and pulls Connor’s hat and hoods over it, hoping that it’s enough to keep pressure on it. He can’t tell.

“We should come back,” she says, coming into the room. “Take his shit.”

“Not right now,” Gavin replies. He needs to get Connor away from here. They can come back to the sticking bodies later. He needs Connor somewhere safe, and he doesn’t know if Zlatko lives here alone or not, and regardless if he did, he doesn’t want to be here any longer.

“Look,” she starts. “We don’t have—”

“I don’t care if you come back alone and take it all for yourself,” Gavin says. “I need to take care of him.”

“Of course you do,” she says, pushing past him. “We all have someone to protect, don’t we?”

Yes.

And Connor is his.

  
  


They step outside, moving down slowly through the roads. They don’t make it far before they find a beaten down motel. Gavin clears the path as he moves up to the second floor, pushing in one of the doors and letting her move past him with Connor. She sets him down on the bed as Gavin closes the door, barricading it with the dresser.

It’s not exceptionally warm here, but they’re closed off from the storm and the glass in the window has somehow remained unbroken, but they won’t be able to start a fire.

“Tina,” she says quietly, setting her bag on the bed.

“What?”

“That’s my name. Tina.”

“Gavin,” he says quietly.

“I know,” she replies.

“What?”

“I heard you two talking to him. Gavin and Connor. I tried to make noise for you to hear me but…” she trails off. “Got my friend killed that way, I guess.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” she says, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “It happens. People die. Lucky I had him for as long as I did. How long have you two known each other?”

“Month or two maybe,” Gavin says.

“Hope you get a few more,” Tina replies. “We should block the window, too. We won’t be able to see out, but the wind… it’ll help keep some of the cold out. And the storm might break it open anyway.”

“Okay. Fix my shoulder and I’ll help you.”

She offers a small smile as she stands back up gesturing for him to come forward. He sheds his jackets, lets her push him into the right spot. When his arm slides back into place again, he lets out a small cry that he can’t quiet as much as he wishes he could. It hurts enough that he wants to start bawling so the emotion has somewhere to go, but he bites it back as best as he can, and despite his offer to help, he’s still a little bit useless while Tina blocks the window, taking the doors off the closet and wedging them into place. If they were going to hole up here longer, they could go back to Zlatko’s. Find some tools. Hammer it into place.

They won’t stay here that long, though. Gavin knows that. They’ll leave once Connor is okay. If Tina stays, maybe he can help her tomorrow. It’s the least he owes her.

He moves over to the bed Connor lays on, sitting beside him, brushing his cheek lightly. He needs to clean up the blood, look at the wound, but all he can think of is how badly he failed Connor again, how much Connor is his person now. How much the life of a stupid angel means to him.


	4. Tina

He wakes with a start. Blinking sleep away, pushing up from the body beside his own. It takes him a moment to realize his hands aren’t bound behind him, that he’s laying on a bed beside the shadowy figure that he’s come to know as Gavin’s. They haven’t shared a space like this more than once, but there is a bulk to Gavin’s body. Broad shoulders, short stature, the way he breathes. Even in the dark, Connor knows it’s him. The only human he’s ever been in contact with. The only non-monster he’s been around for the last few weeks.

Gavin.

Alive.

He sits up, reaching forward, shaking his shoulder until Gavin wakes up, too.

“Con?”

“Where are we?” he whispers. “What happened?”

“Come with me,” Gavin says. “I don’t want to wake her up.”

_ Her? _

Gavin gets up from the bed, pulling Connor along towards the bathroom. When the door closes behind the pair, Connor can make out Gavin’s tired eyes in the light of the early morning sunrise leaking through the dirty window across from them, tiny and offering nothing more than a patch of solid gray. There’s the cut on his cheek, cleaned up now, barely visible, but a bruise forming on his forehead. 

“Are you okay?” Connor whispers, reaching up and touching Gavin’s cheek gently.

“Fine,” he says, pulling back. “I’m fine. Head fucking hurts but Tina fixed my shoulder.”

_ Tina?  _ Must be the  _ her  _ that Gavin mentioned. He remembers vaguely about Zlatko talking about another person in the room with them. Connor heard her but he couldn’t see her, and if she’s here, it must mean Gavin has been forced to be with her or he genuinely trusts her. And how is Connor supposed to know? He moves past it, opting to question something else about Gavin’s answer.

“Your shoulder? What happened to it?”

“Dislocated it,” Gavin replies. “Feels fine now. Only hurts a little.”

_ A little!  _ But it still hurts. He’s still in pain. Of course he’s in pain. Connor is in pain. There’s a faint throb in his head that seems like it’s beating steadily along with his heart.

“Are you alright?” Gavin asks. “You were bleeding when I woke up. I cleaned it but I don’t know shit about head wounds and neither does Tina but… you’re alive so I guess that’s good?”

“We heal fast,” he says. “Most of the damage is probably already gone.”

“So you’re okay?”

“Yes. I’m okay. What happened? I woke up in the room but Zlatko hit me and I passed back out again.”

“That how this happen?” Gavin asks, looking up to his forehead.

Connor looks away from him, glancing to the mirror. The bruise on his own face looks old, already almost gone. He can’t imagine what it would’ve looked like when Gavin woke up. It frustrates him, almost. That he was useless and asleep after being useless just moments before when that thing came after them. Is he ever going to be able to prove his worth? He refused to before and now it’s coming back to bite him.

“Tell me what happened when you woke,” Connor whispers. “Who’s Tina?”

He sighs, looking away from Connor’s face to the floor. And then Gavin tells him, his voice quiet and soft, barely a whisper. He woke up. There was a strange woman on that table. He freed himself then her. She killed Zlatko. Beat him to death. Connor can’t tell what the emotion is in Gavin’s voice when he says this. Somewhere between disgust and relief, overcome by fear even though it’s over and done with.

“Her dad was a doctor, before everything happened. He taught her everything he knew.”

Medically trained. It’s not common, but Connor is glad she’s here. He wouldn’t have known how to fix Gavin’s shoulder. He probably would’ve been too afraid to do it even if he did.

“Is she staying with us?” Connor asks.

“I was thinking she could. She’s tough and I’m shit at fixing up wounds like that. I thought you were dying. You wouldn’t wake up. She told me you were probably okay but… I don’t even know how I fell asleep. I kept checking your pulse every three seconds.”

“I’m sorry.”

“The fuck are you apologizing for? Not your fault that guy took us captive.”

But it is. Zlatko wanted angels to take apart. Not humans. Connor doesn’t say this, though. Maybe it’s the selfish need not to tell Gavin that it is his fault, maybe it’s so he doesn’t have to listen to Gavin say a second time that it isn’t. It doesn’t matter. He wants to go back to sleep. He’s too tired. He doesn’t want to be around anyone at all right now. Everything the angels tried to teach him could be of some service now. That’s the whole reason it was part of their curriculum. They knew that when they started a war something like this could happen. Throw the world into complete disarray and Connor was too stubborn to learn anything.

“Connor?” Gavin whispers. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he says. “We should get moving, though. Out of the city.”

“Tina wants to go back and scavenge Zlatko’s place.”

“She should. So should you.”

Gavin nods, “And you?”

_ And him?  _ Connor wouldn’t go back to that place without a gun to his head. He can still feel that weighty air in his lungs, the taste of metal on his tongue. No. He won’t go back. He doesn’t care if Gavin or Tina think of him as a coward. He isn’t going to go back there. Their need for supplies isn’t going to outweigh anything. He’s surprised Gavin seems so up for it, too, but then again, they don’t care about blue blood. They only cared about Zlatko. He wants to prove himself, but his legs feel like jelly at the mere thought of heading that way.

“I—”

“You could stay,” Gavin says, cutting him off quickly. “Watch over our shit.”

“Okay,” he whispers. He thinks about thanking Gavin, but he can’t. The relief of not going and not being asked to go is outweighed by the shame. “Gavin—”

“Your bruise is almost gone,” he says, reaching up, touching one of the many wounds he’s received in the last twenty-four hours. “Birds really do heal fast, huh?”

“Not a bird.”

“You also said you weren’t an angel. What are you then?”

He doesn’t know. They never gave themselves words, no matter how desperately Connor wanted something to reside on. The comfort of a label versus the mystery of not knowing anything at all. “Just call me an angel, Gavin, it’s easier.”

“Yeah. Probably closer to what you actually are, huh?”

“You think I’m an angel?”

Gavin shrugs, “Don’t know. Look like one, though.”

He tries to smile, but it’s so weak he gives up on it a moment later. He looks towards the window, watching the sun shift outside. His hand reaches for Gavin’s, holds onto it tightly for a moment. Cold, callused fingers against his own. They should get back to sleep. Gavin needs his rest. He looks like hell. But he’ll steal a few more minutes. Just a few.

“Con?”

“Yes?”

“Why did… why did you give up yesterday?” Gavin asks quietly. “When that thing was chasing you? You fell and then you just… curled up and stopped.”

“Fight or flight,” Connor replies.

“But you didn’t do either.”

“No. I froze,” he says. “I don’t know. I just… I was too scared to move. I thought… maybe if he killed me, I would at least buy you some time to get away. I know that was breaking one of your rules though. I’m sorry.”

“What was my rule? ‘Don’t die’?”

“Don’t die and lose half your supplies.”

“God,” Gavin says quietly, hitting him lightly on the shoulder. “I’d rather have you alive than a couple cans of beans.”

“Yeah?”

Gavin nods. “Of course. They don’t hold my hand when it’s cold.”

Connor squeezes his fingers lightly, and this comment earns a much more genuine smile than the last. He thinks about pushing it. Leaning over and kissing Gavin. Lightly, just on the cheek. But he doesn’t. He’s too afraid. He’s afraid of Gavin pushing him back. He’s afraid of ruining this. He’s afraid that Gavin’s comments are nothing more than jokes. He doesn’t want them to be jokes and he doesn’t want to part ways with Gavin in a few weeks, either. He keeps thinking about that. Not going to Jericho. Not heading to the resistance. But he doesn’t know if he can do that. Lose the few friends he has, as obligatory as those relationships are, for a person he’s only known for a month or two.

Maybe it’s better to have nothing at all than to ruin what little they do have.

“We should get back to sleep,” Connor says quietly. “You need your rest.”

“Shit man, like you don’t?”

Connor smiles but offers nothing in return. Their hands break apart. They leave the bathroom. Gavin doesn’t fall asleep instantly when they lay back down, but he does fall asleep eventually. Connor doesn’t. He watches the rise and fall of his chest. He looks at the cut on his cheek. He wonders how hard it will be to leave in two weeks time when they have no choice.

  
  


They leave Connor at the motel. The storm has subsided now, dying down enough that the fall of snow above them is gentle and slow, reminding Gavin of the romantic movie scenes. The ones that didn’t view snow as something that could cause so much death but instead the setting for something beautiful. It’s funny that way. So much of his life when the world had it’s shit together was romanticizing things he hates now. Horrible summers that leave his body covered in bug bites and sweat. Winters that almost made him lose multiple limbs. Horror movies that are now real, with creatures wandering at the edges of his vision.

_ Fucking hell. _

Him and Tina make their way back to Zlatko’s place with empty bags. They fill them quickly. Just enough supplies to make both their packs heavy enough to feel like the trip was worth it. Zlatko didn’t have a huge stock of food, but he had enough that him and Connor could probably make it. But if Tina accepts their offer? They’ll need to keep looking. Especially since a third person will only add more time. They’ll need to make wide curves around big cities and towns. He can’t risk shit. But he can’t put Tina into the equation without even knowing if she’ll come.

“Where are you headed?” Gavin asks, watching Tina pack up the camp stove Zlatko had cooked food on.

“Near Detroit. Furthest fucking side of it, actually. The North point… it’s a meet up spot me and my friends have.”

“Detroit,” Gavin echoes. “Jericho?”

Her gaze snaps up at him before she returns to her work, “Yeah. You too?”

“No. Connor is.”

“Not going to the same place?”

“No,” he says quietly. “How’d you find out about it?”

“They’ve got signs all over the state and a few in Indiana and Ohio. More noticeable in summer, though. At least that’s what Chris told me. You go to the meet up spot, they check you out to see if you're safe, you get to go to the city.”

“And live happily ever after.”

“Wouldn’t say that,” Tina says, straightening. “More people means more noise means more creatures. I wouldn’t go but… my niece is supposed to be there. She ran away a couple years ago when my dad died. He talked about going there all the time. It’s my fault we didn’t. I thought it was too dangerous. Easier to just… take care of ourselves, you know?”

“You can’t trust people,” Gavin says, glancing around Zlatko’s place. They couldn’t have known just from this main room what lurked behind those walls, but Gavin knows now, and it’s hard not to imagine blood smeared on the surfaces.

It’s no wonder Connor didn’t want to come here. When the two of them reluctantly go to check out any more weapons in the backroom and have to get used to the smell of the two bodies, Gavin sees more than he had before. More blue blood. More death.

He watches Tina’s gaze linger on her friend’s body, knowing she is thinking what he’s thinking. If they had time, if it wasn’t winter, they could bury him. But they can’t. Too risky right now. Too much time. They might not even make it out of this city today as is.

“You could come with us,” Gavin says, knowing he shouldn’t offer this without talking to Connor first. “Since we’re headed in the same direction. More people means more noise but it also means more protection.”

She looks up from the body to meet Gavin’s gaze and nods slowly, like she isn’t entirely processing what he’s saying, “We’ll probably run into each other on the way again anyway.”

“Yeah.”

“And you could probably use having someone there to save your life.”

He nods again. He would probably be dead if it wasn’t for her. Sure, if he got out of those zip ties and got a weapon he could’ve beaten Zlatko to death, too, but she was there like a distraction, holding him off. Making him leave the room to begin with. She saved his life just by being there. Maybe he should be more grateful for that than he is.

Gavin leaves her alone, moving into a small office cluttered with shelves cluttered with tokens. Bottles with feathers and bones. A skull sitting a little further away.  _ What the fuck was he doing? _

He comes to a stop before the desk, taking one small step back like the thing looking back at him is alive. Wings nailed to the wall, spread open as if in flight. The feathers look like they’re a culmination of a hundred different birds. Not one angel that these wings were ripped from, but dozens.

There could still be supplies. He forces that thought through his head as he keeps his eyes stuck on other things. Cement floor. Metal chair. Wooden desk. Nothing but pencils (which he pockets) and a few scattered papers (which he leaves behind). He finds a sharpener and a few erasers in one of the desks, a compass and an x-acto knife, too. Little things that he only takes because they might be useful to have. He always thought about recording his life in a journal so some poor fool could find his body and learn from his mistakes. Or, at least, give Elijah the closure if he somehow found Gavin’s body. He uses what little paper he has for survival notes. Things he needs to remember. Shitty sketches of plants and a catalog of his supplies. He doesn’t need to write a letter about his death that Elijah will never find.

He finds a sketchbook in the third drawer, opening it up and laying it out on the desk. In the dim light casting feather shadows across the pages, they’re much more sinister than he expected. Worse than the wings put on display. Sketches of monstrous creatures. Nothing like the ones outside, but instead detailed illustrations of angels ripped apart with notes along the side. The process it would take to cut a wing off and resew it someplace else. If angels can survive blood loss and injuries that would normally kill a human, could they survive something like this instead? Could they survive with their heads cracked open and their brains exposed? How fast can they heal?

It’s not the worst of it. The questions and the equations are not the worst.

It’s the pictures. Polaroids taken of these things clipped to the pages, pages of notes listing out the process, how quickly they died, what Zlatko could do next time to succeed.

Gavin’s body is frozen. Ice cold. Moving slowly backward, unable to move quicker, unable to run away. Zlatko wasn’t just torturing angels or killing them for fun. He was trying to make monsters.

For what?

For his own pleasure? To use them to fight against the others?

What’s the fucking purpose other than to be more of a hideous, horrible creature than they already have chasing them down?

He’s glad Connor didn’t come with them. He shouldn’t have to see this, and Gavin isn’t going to tell him. He just wishes Zlatko was still alive so he could beat him to death with a wrench instead. Doesn’t matter if these angels might’ve been soldiers trying to kill them all off. Gavin knows Connor now. He knows that it wasn’t that simple. They didn’t sign up for this. They were brainwashed as children. And even if they weren’t, do they deserve  _ this? _

_ Maybe,  _ a voice whispers.  _ Maybe some of them do. _

But if they were here in the city… if they were lured by Zlatko…

They wouldn’t have been soldiers, would they?

He turns away, exiting the room quickly, feeling marginally less uncomfortable around two corpses than whatever lies behind him, “Tina?”

“Find anything?”

He swallows back bile, “No. We should get moving, though. I don’t want to leave Connor by himself up there.”

She smiles like she’s in on a joke that Gavin isn’t, “Of course not.”

  
  


“Hey,” Tina says on their way back. “You and Connor… you’re going different places?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Just thought…” she trails off. “You two seem close.”

“He’s my friend.”

“Just a friend?”

Gavin scoffs, “Already making assumptions about strangers?”

“No,” she says. “Well, yeah. You don’t have to hide it from me, you know. If you two are actually… I’m not like that. I mean, I don’t care. I like girls. It’s fine if you like guys.”

“I hardly know you, Tina,” he replies, an edge to his voice. His annoyance half from the content of their conversation and half from them talking at all. Too loud in a city where they were already attacked once. “And there’s nothing between us. Just traveling together. That’s all.”

“Then what was the private meeting in the bathroom this morning?”

“We didn’t want to wake you up.”

“And you touching him last night? Checking his pulse? Sleeping so close to him?”

He hates the way she words it. It makes him feel…  _ wrong  _ in a way that he hasn’t for a really long time.

“I was checking to see if he was alive.”

“Worried about him?”

“He’s my friend. I’m not allowed to be worried about him?”

Tina smiles, “No. You are. I just thought… I don’t know. You looked like my dad.”

“Excuse me?”

“When my mom was sick, he sat by her bed every night. I used to spy on him. He always seemed so sad but even when she was half-dead… light of his life, you know?”

“You think Connor is the light of my life?”

“Shit, I don’t know,” she laughs softly. “I take back the assumptions. I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

“Because I’m right?”

“Shut up before I throw you to the fucking wolves, Tina,” he says.

But she is.

She’s right.

Tina doesn’t need to know that, though.

  
  


They move to a different room in the motel. Just a few doors down into one with a broken roof so they can make a fire that has somewhere for the smoke to go. The snow should obscure it, but even if it didn’t, it’s unlikely that someone would risk coming into a city just to kill a few humans. Not unless they were desperate, and smoke won’t attract the monsters. Not that smart.

Connor counts their food after they bring it back. He sets aside a can of peaches and a package of dried meat for them to split up. He doesn’t react to Gavin’s proposition that Tina come with them. Gavin doesn’t like people, he especially doesn’t like traveling in packs like this, but he trusts her. It’s different than a bond over killing a creature like he had with Zlatko, however brief. Killing another human is something else entirely. He doesn’t think Connor will object, but he didn’t think he would get silence, either.

Tina hasn’t come back yet. She disappeared a few minutes ago to change her clothes. Gavin’s lent her his best sweater. Thick cable knit that’ll probably drown her. He gave her his other coat, too. Thicker than the one she had. She looked cold. Not suited for this trip. A wonder she made it this far, but she probably moved slower than they did. Starting fires and keeping warm. Traveling in the cold is like a death sentence. It’s hard enough to stay warm and still. These last few days have felt like hell to him.

“You okay?”

“Fine,” he says, glancing over his shoulder to the door as if to check for Tina’s lack of arrival. “It’s fine. I like her.”

“You’ve barely said a word to her.”

“I barely said a word to you when I first met you,” Connor replies, looking up to him. “And I like you just fine.”

“Yeah, probably shouldn’t trust your judgment then,” he says. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Yes,” he says. “Though… with Tina, this food won’t last us the whole trip. We’ll need to stop more. Or we could set up a camp. Go hunting. It’ll put us a few days back but it might be better than scavenging stores that are already empty and hoping we get lucky.”

“Yeah. Probably. Not here, though. We need to find somewhere more secluded if we do that.”

Connor is quiet for a moment before he sets the food aside, watching the fire with his full attention, “Did you find anything at Zlatko’s other than this?”

He thinks of the journal and the sketchbooks. The wings. The bodies. That skull. Those feathers kept in jars. Little tiny bone fragments.

“No.”

“Are you lying to me?” Connor whispers.

Gavin gets up, moving closer to Connor’s side, leaning against him. An answer that he doesn’t voice. He doesn’t need to. Connor already knows that there was something, but he doesn’t need to know the full extent. He doesn’t need a number on a scale of one to ten of how bad it was.

“Give me your hand,” Gavin says quietly, nudging Connor. He’s wrapped up so tight within himself. He’s going to break like that. “Come on.”

Connor relinquishes his grip on himself, letting Gavin’s hand wrap around his own. Skin against skin instead of cotton or leather separating their palms.

“I don’t need your comfort because you feel bad for me.”

“Maybe I want to comfort you because I like you,” Gavin whispers.

“Doubtful. I don’t think you like anyone.”

“Because I’m a big mean jerk?” Gavin asks. “And yet you somehow still like me?”

Connor nods, and even though they’re joking, he looks so solemn and sad. Gavin leans over, brushing a soft kiss against his temple. It doesn’t do anything but make Connor’s eyes squeeze shut for a long moment, for the grip on Gavin’s hand to tighten to an almost painful level. He leans against Gavin’s shoulder a moment later, his eyes still closed, like he’s going to fall asleep there.

It’s fine. If this is all Gavin can provide, then it’s what he’ll give. Any comfort he can manage.

  
  


He walks side by side with Tina, going from each motel room to the next, scavenging whatever they can find. With Tina in their group, they still need more food, even if their packs are heavy and weighing down. Connor came with to help curb the uselessness that he felt before, his stubbornness to be proven a worthy member of this group. He couldn’t before. And he was right. He doesn’t know what was at Zlatko’s, but he knows with the way Gavin leaned against him and held his hand that he shouldn’t have gone, even if he could’ve gotten over his fear and grief to do it.

They need to redo their packs. The metal cans and the glass jars are weighing them down, but none of them say anything about it. There is a little bit of a comfort in the weight, reminding them that they are lucky enough to have so much. So much that they stole from Zlatko, who probably stole it from someone just like them. They’ve divvied it up so that they’re caring an equal amount of every supply, in case they get separated. Through another storm or through stupidity, doesn’t matter. There’s even more comfort in that. If they split up, at least Connor knows Gavin will have enough food he could reasonably ration it out for a week. Maybe enough time to find him again. They should find some kind of code that they can share if that ever happens. Some way to find each other in the dark.

Connor makes a mental note of this as they search through dressers and underneath beds, but there’s barely anything here. The stash from Zlatko was a blessing which seems to only help in the smallest amount to cover up the disappointment of the motel. If they were staying here for an extended period of time, they could use plenty of the furniture for barricades in the parking lot, covering up windows, making a sniper nest on the rooftop. Furniture and ratted old blankets are mostly all they can find and they take a few for warmth.

When they look in the small little office, Connor finds a copy of  _ Matilda  _ and  _ Tuck Everlasting  _ in a bin containing lost items. There’s barely anything good. A few kids toys, a necklace, an engagement ring. The books are all Connor takes, thumbing through them as Tina looks inside the file cabinets to find nothing more than papers listing business expenses and repeat customer deals.

“What do you have?”

“Books.”

She lets out a sound somewhere between a sigh and an annoyed laugh, “Yeah? Do you read?”

“Angels aren’t illiterate if that’s what you’re wondering.”

“No, I just… my friend. He liked to read. Could never figure out what the hell was his genre, he jumped all over the place so much. Read the dictionary once because it’s all we could find.”

Connor looks up, pausing half-way through one of the books. He wasn’t reading it yet. Just flipping through to see the printed words. Reassure him that there was once a business like this. That there were so many businesses that existed beyond survival skills. People could indulge in the arts because there weren’t monsters filling the streets. It’s so long ago he barely remembers it, probably because even then he could hardly indulge in such a trivial thing. Guns and survival were drilled into him the moment he was born. A war was brewing before he took his first breath.

“I’m sorry about what happened to him,” Connor says quietly. “I didn’t… I wish I could’ve helped him.”

“It’s not your fault. Just mine.”

“How so?”

“Well, if I hadn’t been trying to make you and Gavin catch on that we were in the room next to you, Zlatko wouldn’t have gotten all pissy about us making noise and wouldn’t have killed him. But we were going to die anyway. Maybe just not… that way.”

Connor thinks back to Zlatko, with the gun in his hand, trading off for a knife. The way he said he would end Gavin’s life quickly, before he even woke. A human that had stumbled upon his cellar. Just an accident. But he wanted to torture Connor, and he wanted to torture Gavin to torture him.

“Was your friend like me?” Connor asks quietly. “I didn’t see—”

“No. He was human. I don’t think Zlatko really cared about that. I just think he wanted to kill people. Guess even serial killers can’t rest when the world ends.”

“How did you meet up with Zlatko?” he asks. “Me and Gavin were running from a creature in the city, but you…”

“Oh,” she sighs. “Something similar. Me and Chris were headed to Jericho. We stopped in the city to scavenge. Stumbled across his house. He invited us to eat. Passed out. Stuck in there for a few days. He kept talking about angels, how much he hated them. He told you, too, right? I heard him. But I don’t think he was keeping us there because of angels.”

“No, not at all,” Connor agrees. He looks back to the book, faded pages yellow now with barely legible print. He closes the book, tucking it in his pack next to the other before he pauses, “Do you want one?”

Tina smiles before giving a nod to him. Connor holds the battered copy of  _ Tuck Everlasting  _ out to her and she takes it gratefully. Not a thing to read or to be entertained by. Just for comfort.

“How did you meet him?”

“How did you meet Gavin?” Tina returns.

“I almost died in his backyard. He helped me.”

“Nice,” she says with a laugh. “Me and Chris were step siblings. Just barely. My dad met someone new like a year before all this started and he rushed into a wedding three months later. I would’ve been concerned if the kids and her weren’t so nice, you know, because it was so fast? But I wasn’t living with him at the time so… It’s not important. Sorry.”

“It’s fine. I like to hear about it. People’s lives before.”

“And all their mundane details?” she asks. “We became friends. We traveled together. I was there for him when his mom died. He was there for me when my dad died. Then it was just us and my sister. Can we—We should go back, right? I don’t think there’s anything left here to find.”

_ Right. _

Connor stands, pulling his backpack on. He reaches out and takes her hand, squeezes it once before letting it go and starting for the door, “I’m sorry. Again. I know it doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t take any of it away. But you aren’t alone.”

“I know. Everyone on this planet has lost someone now.”

“That’s not what I meant, Tina.”

“I know,” she whispers. “Just easier this way.”

Easier to make jokes, easier to pretend it doesn’t matter. Easier to put some distance between it and them. Pretend that the death doesn’t account for anything because it happens so often. Pretend that people don’t matter because they will just eventually die.  _ Easier. _

  
  


“Can I sit with you?” Connor asks quietly.

“You should be asleep,” Gavin says, looking over his shoulder, probably to where Tina has curled up in the bed furthest from them, close by the bathroom. As if the escape through that tiny window would be doable.

Maybe it would, with the two of them here. A monster too intent on tearing Connor’s body apart to notice Tina slipping out the window. Not that he would mind. He wasn’t lying when he said he liked her. They haven’t talked much, but when she came back to the fire while they were eating, she proved herself to be funny, despite the world right now. Despite the fact her friend died less than twenty four hours ago.

“I’m tired of sleeping,” he says, nudging Gavin aside, taking the seat next to him on the bench they’ve pushed over to the window. Too small for the two of them, but Gavin doesn’t seem to mind.

They watch the snow outside, drifting so much slower now. Barely there. It’s dark, the moon leaving them little light to watch the outside together. They don’t need to keep watch. They should be fine without it, but Connor tried to sleep and failed. He kept thinking about Gavin sitting over here, looking out the window by himself. He kept looking at the bench, seeing how there was just barely not enough room for a second person without sitting far, far too close.

“We should get out of here,” Gavin whispers. “Get back on the side roads. It’ll take us longer but… there are safe zones in some of the cities. People are still drawn to them.”

“Okay.”

“No arguments?”

“Why would I?” Connor asks, looking over to him. “What’s the point? We yell at each other about what’s quicker or what’s safer? I’d rather go with safety. You’re the one that was all about getting there as fast as possible.”

“I know. I just… I’m not used to people just being okay with whatever I say.”

“You’re not used to people at all,” Connor replies. “Now you have two of us tagging along. What happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“You acted like you hated me and then…”

“Then you almost died.”

“That all it takes?” he says quietly. “For you to be nice to people? For them to almost die?”

“Is this an argument?” Gavin asks. “I thought we weren’t arguing.”

“It’s not an argument. It’s just a question.”

Gavin reaches over, taking his hand again like he had earlier in the day. Holding it gently but so firmly. Connor doesn’t get it. What happened to change him. Why he touched his face so gently when he was cleaning his wounds. Why he stayed curled up next to him on the bed while he was out when he could’ve slept on the other one. The motel room isn’t warm, but there was no need to pretend to conserve body heat when they had these new coats, the thick blankets in the motel, the sleeping bags. And then the kiss.

“You like me,” Connor whispers.

“I do. I thought I told you that already.”

“Do you like-like me?”

“I’m not ten years old, Con.”

_ Con.  _ The nickname new but still bringing a small smile to his face, “But do you?”

“I can’t,” Gavin replies. “Once we get to Detroit, we won’t see each other again.”

“I know.”

“Connor…” Gavin trails off, watching Connor’s face too closely, too intently.

“Gavin,” he returns.

“I just really don’t want you dead, okay?” he whispers. “Is that a crime?”

“No. I never said it was.”

Gavin holds his hand a little tighter, pulling it closer to his chest, resting Connor’s palm against where his heart is hidden under layers of clothes, “Is it okay if I stop being a jerk to you or do I have to meet some quota first?”

“You can be nice if you want to. It’s preferable,” Connor says. And it is. Of course it is. That’s obvious. But he thinks about the way Gavin is holding his hand right now, the way his hands and his lips felt when they touched his beaten skin. He’d like that for as much as he can get it, even if that isn’t forever.

“And it’s okay if I like you?”

“Yes.”

Even if it hurts to know it won’t be much more.

He wonders if he could ask Gavin if they could just… stop. Stop with this rule that they aren’t allowed to have anything at all. Ask him if it’s okay if they hold hands and kiss and sleep close to each other during the next week or two of their trip to Detroit. He wonders if they just told each other they could have whatever they wanted until then, maybe it would be enough to sustain them for the heartbreaking months that will follow. That at least they’d have a sliver of it all. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t want to hear a no and not get Gavin to hold his hand like this ever again.

So he keeps his mouth shut and he lets Gavin rest his head against his shoulder and he doesn’t wake him when he falls asleep there. He’s returning the favor from earlier, even if he wishes there could be more.

Connor didn’t think that when he came over here that Gavin would kiss him and everything would change, but he wished it had. He wished Gavin hadn’t shut it down and instead let it happen. But why would he? Connor wouldn’t ask Gavin to leave his brother for Jericho, and if their situations were reversed, Connor wouldn’t leave a brother for Gavin, and he wouldn’t ask someone headed to Jericho to stay with him either. It’s just how it is.

Still.

He would’ve liked that kiss.


	5. Perkins

Tina doesn’t like Gavin’s  _ be quiet  _ rule. She tells him that it’s too strict. If there’s a monster close enough to hear them talking, it’s close enough to hear their footsteps in the snow. The crunch of it under each step would alert something with that good of hearing every second. Gavin doesn’t believe her. It leads them to a hushed argument of whispers passed back and forth, but Connor gets the idea that it’s not a real argument at all. They’re having fun with this. Pushing each other back and forth.

Gavin probably already knew that they didn’t have to be as quiet as they were. That talking in low voices would fine. Doesn’t much matter though. It’s the fear that keeps him quiet. Doing as much as he possibly can. Tina is helping him relax, just a little bit. Maybe it’s the gun she has, always held in her hands, always ready to be aimed and fired. Maybe it’s the fact she proved herself enough that she would kill someone for them. Though it never really was for  _ them,  _ was it? Connor heard the other person get shot. Gavin told him the way Zlatko had her tied to that table. Killing Zlatko was for her and her alone, but she still extended her hand and helped them. When Connor woke up yesterday, he thought for a while that Gavin had carried him to the motel. He thought about it enough to wish it was true. Then Tina told him she had done it, that Gavin’s arm was busted. He’s not complaining, though it’s not like Gavin would. His complaints are always unsaid things, like taking Connor’s hand when they move through small towns or glancing down at his feet every couple of minutes instead of asking for a break. He phrases everything as if it exists for them.  _ Are you hungry? Do you need to rest for the night? _

It’s not niceness. It’s the inability for Gavin to say that he’s feeling anything negative. Anger for him shows perfectly across his face but everything else gets bottled up and stored. One day that shelf is going to tip. It’s what makes it so easy for Connor to reply with  _ Yes, I am. Yes, I do.  _ The same reason why sometimes when Gavin continues to refuse to ask to stop, Connor will feign hunger pains or that his feet hurt. And they do, but not nearly as bad as Gavin’s must. His healing extends that far. His healing could even extend far enough to shrivel up his body and let him not eat a thing if he grew out his wings, let them drag across the snow like a cloak on his shoulders. But he refuses to do that.

One tiny selfish act. Like Tina’s with her talking, though her’s so much less dangerous of a thing to play with, Connor thinks.

“Maybe she’s right,” Connor says quietly. “The walk would feel much faster if we talked about things. Pass the time.”

“Exactly,” Tina says.

“The fuck do we have to talk about?” Gavin returns, looking back to him. “The fuck do you wanna say to me?”

Connor smiles, lets it drift as Tina starts to go on about how her and her family would make up stories. Her friend (brother, she sometimes calls him) loved to read and he would spit back stories at them that he consumed as a kid. When he got to a point he didn’t remember the plot, one of them would fill in for it until it was unrecognizable from whatever it was originally. Orphans moving from guardian to guardian instead gaining incredible god-like powers rather than live undercover in a circus. Siblings finding a magical world in a wardrobe finding yet another in a lake, and another through a tree. Never-ending spiral of magical worlds that they find themselves trapped in. Connor listens to her say this as he watches Gavin. Thinking—

_ What do we have to talk about? What do you want to tell me? _

Plenty.

And he almost had last night.

Maybe it’s stupid for him to keep rehashing the same thing, and Gavin is marginally nicer to him, but it fades a bit when Tina is around. Acting tough as though Tina knowing Gavin cares about him is the worst thing in the world. Or maybe it isn’t an act at all—not the part where Gavin likes him, but the part where he’s acting tough. The shell of armor that Gavin has encased himself with isn’t a thing made of falsities. People can’t live in this world without having that genuinely.

But Connor finds he would still like Gavin to be the Gavin from a few days ago when he walked beside him and held his hand so he didn’t fall. When despite the scarves and the gloves and the goggles concealing their faces from harsh winds and frostbite, Connor could tell when he was smiling or worried just by the pressure of his hand against his.

He’s alone towards the back of this pack now. Tina and Gavin side-by-side, Connor a few steps behind, clinging onto the straps of his backpack, a foolish and horrible replacement for Gavin’s hand.

  
  


They stop at an antique shop to rest. The three of them crowd into the space together, which would’ve been large and accommodating if it weren’t for the chunky furniture taking up the floor. Tina sits on top of a desk cross-legged, shedding her coat and gloves to stretch out and eat the sliced pears passed to her. Connor sits on a covered sofa to the back, leaning against his hand, looking out at the broken pieces of plates that once sat housed in the shelf across from him.

Gavin takes Tina’s cue and gets rid of one of his coats, resting it across the check-out counter as he comes to sit by Connor’s side.

This place would be good to hide at. Heavy furniture that could barricade the entrances and exits. There’s a staircase to the right that winds upstairs and they could make a nest of blankets and pillows to sleep in. It’s like a torment, sometimes, finding all these good places to stay. Things that tempt him to stop moving on. It’s safe. That’s more than he can say about Elijah. He has no idea if his brother is even still alive anymore. He doesn’t know if where he’s at is crowded with monsters and they can’t make a single sound.

And here it’s warm. The storm from the day before seems to have snapped in the opposite direction. It’s still freezing outside, but the temperature has risen enough to make it feel like spring might finally be here soon, even if the snow hasn’t started melting away into nothingness yet.

He leans against Connor’s shoulder, wondering if the two of them could stay here for a little while. If they could agree to circle back and meet here if Jericho and Elijah are both dead ends. He supposes Tina can come, too, but he is thinking more about Connor. About having him for longer than the week it’ll take to make it up to Detroit. He thinks about waking up and checking traps he left around the perimeter, of Connor cleaning animals by a fire and fashioning new gloves to keep them warm. He thinks about the river nearby that they could go to in the summer, splashing water back and forth. Connor seems like he’d make a good fisherman, too. They could catch things there and cook it by the fire after they spend the day swimming.

And then he thinks about the nights they could have. Tangled together in sheets. He thinks about the dream where Connor had soft lips brushing gentle kisses against his skin and hands so careful and tentative about touching Gavin’s scarred skin. Too careful, Gavin thinks. He’d be far too careful taking off his shirt, too careful touching him. So would Gavin, though. He remembers Connor shrinking back away from him and he still doesn’t have the answer of why he fought so hard. Was it because something happened before, or was it simply because he thought it was going to happen then?

“Gavin?” Connor whispers.

It takes him a moment to snap out of his thoughts. He assumed he imagined the way Connor said his name. Quiet, close. A brush of his name against his neck.

Now he feels dirty and wrong, moving further from Connor, ashamed that he was imagining them doing anything at all, let alone when he was a few inches away from him.

“Yeah?”

“Your face is red.”

“Shut up,” Gavin says. “Eat your stupid pears.”

“Okay.”

But Connor is smiling and Gavin feels this stab in his gut of how quickly he will stop seeing that smile. Because it’s a brief thing, as all of Connor’s smiles are. Because they’ll put their scarves and their goggles back on and cover up their faces. Because soon, Connor won’t be here at all.

  
  


It is a boring day filled with walking, but Tina’s stories seem to help, though both Gavin and Connor don’t jump in like her family had. She doesn’t seem to mind. The action of her talking seems to help her and their ability to listen helps them. It breaks up the neverending white blur of snow-covered cars and snow-covered buildings and snow-covered trees. The fear that Gavin had of them getting too comfortable with their speech and talking louder and louder doesn’t come true. Tina’s voice is an even quiet thing as the sun slowly starts to set and their attention is turned to a place to stay for the night.

They settle on a library because it’s the only building the area that still has a roof and all its walls intact, and Connor likes the idea of wandering through the shelves. While the others set up a campsite in a conference room, he moves from one section to the next, looking over the stacks of books neatly arranged. There’s an adult section that’s completely wiped out. All the mystery thrillers missing from their spots besides for a handful that were either duplicates or deemed uninteresting.

Connor moves to the young adult, his hands trailing across dystopian trilogies that hoped for a world beyond whatever this is but will likely never happen. A war that stops the angels won’t wipe out those creatures and vice versa. This is a dead-end world with no future governments to organize children by personality type. Though it isn’t as if he doesn’t yearn from it. A government is more defeatable than this. He would trade places with Tris Prior in a heartbeat.

The middle grade and children’s section of the library are different. A few scattered shelves almost completely empty. A thief that has come for both  _ The Family Upstairs  _ and  _ If You Give a Moose a Muffin. _

A thief with a kid.

“Connor,” Gavin whispers, jumping him out of his thoughts.

He abandons the section for Judy Blume and meets Gavin halfway through the children’s section, stopping somewhere with the Percy Jackson series lining the space, “Did something happen?”

“No,” he says. “Just… beds are ready. We can sleep. Tina wants to take watch just in case. I think she’s jumpy.”

If she was, she’d probably have good reason to be. Or maybe it’s just hard to sleep when she witnessed her friend be murdered in front of her. Connor hasn’t exactly slept either and he didn’t even know him. Every time he closes his eyes he remembers the sound of someone saying  _ please don’t  _ cut off with a bullet.

“Someone took some of the books,” Connor says quietly, changing the subject that seems to only affect him.

“Guess they were bored.”

“Yeah.”

They both go silent again, and Connor doesn’t want to leave. He doesn’t want to walk away. He doesn’t want to go lay down and close his eyes and pretend that he’ll get much sleep at all. He doesn’t know what happened to the other angels, but his dreams fill in the gaps. He doesn’t want to know, either, which is exactly why it tortures him so much. Everything he imagines is likely barely scratching the surface of the horror they endured.

“Are you okay?” Gavin asks, moving closer to him.

“No,” he says. Automatic reply. Impossible to attempt at deceiving Gavin at all. “Not even a little bit. Are you?”

“No,” he whispers. “Don’t think I’ve been okay for a while and it just keeps getting worse.”

“Are you scared?”

Gavin nods, leaning back against one of the shelves, “Everything is terrifying in this world. I wish I could…”

He trails off, leaving it blank for Connor to fill in the gaps. Wish he could be strong enough, brave enough, to not be bothered by the monsters or the people. Brave enough to speak without whispering even when they’re behind closed doors that would swallow their words.

“Can I kiss you?” Connor asks.

The abruptness of his words makes Gavin laugh, makes Connor smile, too. But the question still stands and when Gavin realizes it does, his laugh fades away and his smile disappears, “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“It’s just one kiss,” he says, like a promise. If he promises it’s one kiss, then it won’t change anything between them. One kiss won’t destroy the barriers they’ve put up between them trying to protect themselves from their departure later.

It’s just one kiss.

One kiss doesn’t have that much power.

But he isn’t going to pretend it’s a good idea, either.

“Okay.”

  
  


When Connor kisses him, it is not exactly as he imagined it. Connor’s hands are not ghostly things that barely touch him, but they are ice cold. There’s one on his waist, pushing up his shirt, brushing across his skin as it pulls him closer. The one on his neck feels like ice cubes. But the kiss is soft like he thought it would be. A gentle thing that breaks far too soon. So soon that he wonders if it counts at all. And Gavin probably shouldn’t do it, but he pulls Connor back before he can leave him, deciding in a moment that whatever it was before, it didn’t count as the one kiss that Connor promised him.

He feels like something inside of him is breaking. Something snapping out of place. Something that has craved comfort for so long that he is beyond the point of getting it the way he wants. It isn’t being repaired by the kiss. It has long since died and the kiss is reviving it in a gruesome, painful way that grates against his insides. It’s all he can do not to let out a sound as if he’s being attacked. It’s all he can do to shove the tears back down his throat and appreciate the fact that Connor wanted to kiss him, that he asked, that he gave Gavin enough warning so tears didn’t instantly start to spill down his cheeks.

Nobody has kissed him in a long, long time. Nobody has held his hand or touched him or looked at him the way Connor looks at him. He used to yearn for the man that came and went from their cabin, residing only long enough to make Gavin feel like he might not be alone. He used to wish he could come back. Fill in the gaps of loneliness that now carve him open. He never wanted  _ him.  _ He just wanted  _ someone.  _ And now he can’t imagine a someone that isn’t  _ Connor. _

Connor pulls away from him, slowly, carefully, resting still too close to him. Close enough that Gavin could pull him back again, but he can’t pretend that the second kiss wasn’t real like he could with the first, and they made a promise.

One kiss.

One kiss that has too much power.

“We should get some sleep,” Connor says quietly.

_ No,  _ Gavin thinks. They should stay here and kiss again. They should let everything melt away. Connor’s kissed him now and it made the thing that cares for him grow ten times stronger and how is he supposed to do anything, how is he supposed to let Connor leave his side in a few weeks now?

_ Fuck. _

He lets Connor leave. Freezes his body into stillness as Connor steps away. If he doesn’t, he will hold Connor in place, he will nuzzle his face against his neck, he will make a home for himself in Connor’s arms.

One kiss—

What idiots they are.

  
  


He lays down close by Gavin. For warmth. For a kind of warmth that isn’t what his excuse is. Sleeping near him helps the nightmares in the sense he won’t wake up screaming, but it doesn’t make them go away. He wakes up the first time and their hands are linked together across the space between them. The second time, Connor is curled up small and Gavin’s arm is slung over his waist from behind him, holding him like a thing to be protected. The third time, when Tina tries to trade off to get her own sleep, they both move towards the windows together and Connor sleeps with his head in Gavin’s lap, feeling the soft brush of fingers through his hair.

He wonders what Tina must think of them. Two stupid love birds, maybe. Overly affectionate fools.

Whatever she thinks, she doesn’t say anything at all.

They pack up their things the next morning, Tina taking the front as she leads the group in a single file line down the street. When they reach a highway so cluttered with cars they have to shimmy through them or try their best at being silent when they climb over. Tina is standing on top of a sedan when something in her changes. She turns, glancing around the space before jumping down, asking them to follow her quickly. Quietly.

Connor doesn’t know what’s happening. He doesn’t know what she saw. But they follow her orders as they move through the abandoned highway, slipping down an exit for a small town. They must’ve only been walking for an hour now. The sun has just risen. If they have to hole up, they’ll lose another day or more. The monsters wouldn’t just disappear if they know food is on the other side of a wall. Their attention span isn’t that short.

But then he sees Tina stop, glance over her shoulder and back at them.

And he gets it.

They are not running from monsters.

  
  


They run.

At some point, they’ve started to sprint through the snow, moving fast down the crowded road and into the town. A decent-sized place that’s still littered with cars but doesn’t have the skyscrapers of Detroit or Chicago. A city that’s bordering on too dangerous to be in. He doesn’t know what they’re running from, but it isn’t as if he’s going to be left behind, and if both Tina and Connor are sprinting like this, he’s going to trust them.

They come to a stop by a florist shop, going in through a broken window. They wheel a cart weighed down with rocks and gravel bags on it behind them to barricade themselves in before kicking the lock on the wheels into place.

“We can cross to another building through here. Maybe they won’t see us leave from a different place.”

“Who?” Gavin asks.

Connor stands still, eyes on the ground, not looking at either of them.

“Tina—”

“We should keep going.”

“Tina,” he says, reaching out for her, grabbing her wrist too tightly. “Who’s out there?”

“Angels.”

They both look over to Connor, still staring at the ground. Broken pieces of glass and dirt.

_ Angels. _

After him. Like he said they weren’t.

Did Connor lie to him? Or did he really just think he wasn’t that important?

He can’t tell. He can’t tell if the look on his face and the refusal to pick his gaze up is guilt from a lying or guilt from dragging them into this. Gavin drops Tina’s wrist, moving away from her to step down one of the aisles. Find a way out of this place. There’s so much glass around them. Glass ceiling, windows. It was a shitty place to come. They have to get through it quickly. Cross an alley to the store next door. Hope that they aren’t caught. But Tina is pretty certain with how big this store is and how far they ran that they lost the angels. There is no pounding on the door trying to get in, no bullets raining in through the glass.

“Wait!” Connor yells, a hand around Gavin’s waist, pulling him back. He stays there, unmoving, holding Gavin so tightly that he’s having a hard time breathing. “Do you see that?”

See what? All he can focus on, stupidly, like a fucking teenager with no bigger problems than his love life, is Connor’s arm around him, the way he’s pressed up too close against his back.

“No.”

“There,” Connor says. “Tina, don’t move any closer.”

Tina takes a step back, moving closer to them. “Is that a fishing line?”

Connor nods, “Probably a tripwire tied to an explosive.”

“We can step over it.”

Yes. They can. But none of them move for a moment. Not until Tina steps forward and takes a tentative step over it. Fine. She’s alive. Not dead.

“You can let go of me now,” Gavin whispers.

“I know,” Connor says, but he lingers for a moment longer.  _ I know. I know.  _ And yet he stays. When he does let go of Gavin, it’s in a slow movement, pulling back like Gavin is the bomb that’s about to detonate. “Be careful, okay?”

“I will.”

They move carefully forward. Avoiding mines across the ground. It was only a guess from Connor at first, but on the sight of the second and third, Gavin knows he was onto something. They’re just lucky the lines are low enough that they can step over it without fear of hitting it. But even then they keep double-checking and when Gavin stumbles over one and nearly hits it, Connor is right by his side for every single one after to help steady him so he doesn’t lose his balance. It would be annoying if Gavin didn’t know how real the concern was. He doesn’t have time to pretend he’s pissed that Connor is trying to keep him alive.

“We can’t go this way,” Tina says, eyeing the doorway out to the back parking lot. The door is pushed open, but there’s a thin thread of fishing line wrapped around the knob. Maybe it’s not active or complete, but they can’t risk that.

“Where else?”

“There’s an office over there,” she says, turning to point to the right. “I didn’t check it yet.”

“Too worried I was gonna fall and kick the door open?” Gavin asks.

“Yeah,” she says. Half like she’s joking, half like her thoughts are somewhere else. “We should keep moving.”

So they do. Gavin follows her towards the office and he feels Connor behind him, a hand clinging to the back of his backpack. Not pulling him to a stop, just holding onto him in some minor way. Gavin doesn’t really know what happened. Before, of course, they weren’t exactly unfriendly. They held hands when they walked. They used each other for warmth in the store. But ever since Zlatko—

Things have been different. As though Connor doesn’t want to be alone. He’s always reaching for Gavin, always holding onto him. But Gavin has reached out for him, too. Keeps holding onto him. Searching for him when they’re alone. The fear of something like this happening again, of a human nearly killing Connor—

He turns around when they reach the office, Tina saying something about a ladder to the floor above and the open window that will deposit them right into the alley to keep going. He isn’t listening. He is stepping forward, reaching out to Connor, pulling down the edge of his scarf, pulling him too close.

And his last thought before the bomb goes off is  _ one kiss is not enough. _

  
  


Connor falls forward when the blast starts, knocking Gavin back against the floor, his ears ringing. He can hear Tina calling something out but can’t make out the words. He tries to push himself back up and feels a pang of something and he reaches blindly and as best as he can to whatever it is impaled in the back of his thigh. He knows that for humans, they’re not supposed to do what he’s doing. Don’t pull out the thing blocking the wound. But he can’t heal if it’s stuck in his leg and he certainly can’t run like this.

His hand closes around something metal. Small. Not as bad as it feels. He pulls it out, tossing it across the floor as he forces himself to get up. His vision is blurry, but he’ll be fine. A few days and the wound will close.  _ He can do this. _

“Gavin?” he says, his voice thick with something he cannot name.

“Alive,” he mumbles. 

Barely.

Connor would’ve shielded him from the blast, but hitting him against the ground and the sound of it—

“We have to go,” he says, finding the only words that he can. Things that Gavin said to him when they were running two days ago. “Can you move?”

“Yeah.”

“Then let’s go,” he says quietly, getting to his feet, helping Gavin stand up. They move toward the office, away from the smoldering remains of the doorway behind them.

Connor doesn’t look back at it. He doesn’t know what set it off. Maybe a particularly strong gust of wind. Maybe something fell. Maybe an angel tried to open the door and blew themself up. It doesn’t matter. They aren’t going that way.

“Fucking Christ,” Tina says, kneeling on the ledge of the window. “You could’ve said something. I thought you two died.”

They should’ve. He heard her voice and assumed she was okay. It was a selfish, callous move to be too focused on Gavin.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. Just go,” she says, holding a hand out to him.

She helps haul Connor up onto the window, dropping down on the other side in the alley. Gavin is just after him and Tina a moment later. The three move in a pack along the alley to the next building. Connor starts to lag behind, but he doesn’t say anything. If they know he’s injured, they won’t keep moving. It’ll be better to make sure they get to safety. His plan is flawed and barely formed, but it’s still there. If he falls down, they can go on. If they see him and insist on helping, he can at least lie and say he’s fine and that he can catch up and by the time they realize it, they’ll be long gone and Connor will be beyond saving.

He’s not going to sit around and let Gavin save him again. Not when he’s more important. He has a life. Connor has a few people he called friends because they were forced into the same camp and had the same ideals. He barely knows them. But Gavin has a brother. Tina has a sister. They have people waiting for them. Connor has nothing.

And he probably brought this onto them.

If there are angels following them, it’s either because they’re sent out to kill any humans they find or because they want to bring Connor back. Tie him up into a chair. Torture him for information on Jericho. He won’t break, though. They won’t break him. There are too many people to protect and the pain they’ll inflict upon him will be worth it. 

He stumbles, but he doesn’t fall. He doesn’t need to. Tina and Gavin have come to a halt inside of a furniture warehouse next door, hands raising slowly as they step backwards. He sees a gun come into view. A silenced pistol trained on Tina’s face.

_ No. _

He slows down, his hands trembling as he takes a small step back. He can’t go the other way. He can’t leave them behind. His gun is in the holster on his waist, waiting for him to grab it, urging him to use it. But all he can think of when he thinks of holding it is the taste of metal, the bruised flesh of his face when it hit him. All of the scars on his body from whippings. Everything they did to hurt when he refused to do this.

One of them looks over, meeting his gaze and Connor recognizes him in an instant. Richard Perkins. It isn’t a surprise they sent him. Connor’s classmate when he was younger. Two years older, held back because he couldn’t get the hang of some of the lessons quite right while Connor jumped a year forward because other than the guns and the fighting, he was intelligent and he was good and he held so much promise in their eyes.

Perkins has hated him for twenty years.

So it doesn’t surprise him when the gun trained on Tina moves away from her and to Connor. Finger over the trigger, so tempted to pull it. But they won’t kill Connor if they’ve come this far looking for him. Four days of traveling from Gavin’s house, two weeks running from the angel’s base, the almost month-long stay at Gavin’s place. It isn’t an easy trip, even if Connor has gone in a thousand circles. They need him alive, though. Take him back. Tie him up. Torture him. It’s what he’s seen before.

Perkins is opening his mouth, probably to call Connor over, when Gavin steps forward, lunging towards Perkins, hitting him hard. The gun goes off as Connor starts to race forward.

_ No, no, no. _

Gavin screams, the gun is pried from his hands by Tina aimed at Perkins, screaming for him to stop to stay down. Everything is a blur. White noise in his head. The muffled sound doing more to silence the world than the blast did a minute ago. His vision is spinning as he falls forward, pulling Gavin away, a hand on his face, muttering something that he doesn’t think are real words, but something along the lines of  _ I’m fine. _

But he isn’t. Connor finds the wound first by the hole in his jacket and he unzips it, hands fumbling with the stupid metal zipper as he undoes it. He finds it too quickly, red blood staining his shirt, looking so much blacker than it should be.

He’s going to die.

Gavin is going to die and it’s all his fault.

He presses his hands against it as best as he can. He can’t hear anything, can’t focus on anything more than pressing down as hard as he can against the bullet hole. He hears the sound of another bullet firing. Not quiet, not the silenced noise of an angel's, but so far and distanced from him and the static of his vision.

“Connor?” Tina says quietly, beside him now, her voice even, calm. Calm amongst the storm. “Move your hands. Let me help.”

He does. He is good at following orders. He always has been. He moves and Tina replaces his hands with bundled up fabric. Clothes from her pack, he thinks. He vaguely recognizes the shirt. Light gray that turns color far too quickly. He squeezes his eyes shut, feels hands on his face, brushing across his lip. He can’t tell if he’s imagining it or not. If the feeling is something he’s hallucinating to comfort himself.

He doesn’t know what’s wrong with him. Why he is so broken these days. Why he cannot seem to hold himself together even the smallest amount.

“I need something to hold it in place while we move him,” Tina says. “Connor. Are you listening?”

He nods, opens his eyes as he tugs the scarf from around his neck. He helps Tina wrap it around the wound, tying it tightly around Gavin’s waist. He hears a pained sound come from Gavin’s mouth and he thinks of it as a blessing. Pain means Gavin is still here. A noise means he’s still alive.

She helps lift Gavin up off the floor as they move. A slow race away from the town. Skittering down a road into the trees, hidden from view of the other angels in town. He doesn’t know how many there are. They usually travel in packs of four, but if one of them set off that blast and Tina shot Perkins—

There’d only be two left.

He has to hope they’re lucky enough not to be spotted by them.

They move through the trees quickly, following the slope of the hill downward as it dips towards a small shed. At least they’ll be out of the snow. At least they can hope that their tracks won’t lead them here. Fix up Gavin as fast as they can, move on.

Tina moves to open the door, Gavin resting like deadweight against Connor’s side. His hand touches his cheek, feels the cold skin. “You alive in there?”

“Yeah,” he whispers.

“Good.”

“I’m not going to die, Connor.”

“I know you aren’t.”

“You said I was. Before. Really rude of you.”

He blinks back tears. He didn’t mean to say it out loud. He didn’t realize he was. The angels taught him a hundred things but only one really stuck.

Guilt.

For everything, for anything.

“Shut up,” he whispers. “I’m sorry. You’re not going to die. I’ll kill you if you die, you know that?”

“I do.”

“So you aren’t going to die.”

“No,” Gavin whispers. “Of course not.”

Tina comes back to his side, helping Gavin into the shed, the door closing tight behind them as they clear off a table, laying Gavin down on it in the small space. Connor does his best to help Tina, but he was never medically trained. He only knows the bare minimum.

“Tina, he’ll need blood--”

“I know.”

“Tina--”

“There isn’t anything here,” she says, hitting something on one of the shelves. It falls and cracks against the grass. An empty jar that once held something, probably, but it is a minute detail in a place so thick with the scent of blood, so heavily ready to turn itself over to death. “I can’t give him blood if I’ve got fucking nothing to do it with. So just--just stop. Sit with him. Keep him talking. We need him awake.”

“Okay,” he says.

_ Okay. _

He moves to Gavin’s side, takes his hand, filters through everything and anything he can. Asks Gavin a hundred questions as Tina works. The answers all come back the same, muddled with pain and blood and things leading back to his brother.

Times they shared when they were kids. Running around in the backyard. When Gavin nearly drowned Elijah when they were playing Chicken in the pool. It wasn’t on purpose. He keeps saying that, like it’s important, like Connor could ever believe that Gavin would try to murder his brother when they were ten.

“Stupid kids,” Gavin says quietly. “Really stupid.”

“Shows now,” he replies. “Still stupid.”

“Yeah. Shouldn’t have tried to save your life or anything. Really stupid.”

“It was,” Connor whispers. “Not today. But before. At your place. It was really stupid to save me. You should’ve left me for dead.”

“I should’ve,” he agrees, wincing, trying to move away from Tina’s hands. Connor reaches forward, pushing him back against the table, holding his hand there to pin him in place. “Fucking torture.”

“I know,” he says quietly.

“Hey, you know,” Gavin says, the hand holding onto Connor’s is tight, painful. Anything to help with this. “If I didn’t meet you, I’d probably have died at that art store. Do you remember?”

“The little girl?” he laughs. “She would’ve killed you?”

“Without a doubt. So you saved my life.”

“I’m sure I did.”

“If I’m going to die, Con—”

“You aren’t going to die,” Tina says.

“If I’m going to die,  _ Connor,”  _ Gavin says, refusing to look at Tina. “I think you should know that. That you saved my life.”

Oh.

It’s the way he says it, despite the joking manner of his voice, that Connor realizes he’s being serious. The way he looks at Connor, the way he’s making sure to say these words. He doesn’t believe anyone when they say he’s going to live. Connor doesn’t either. Tina isn’t professionally trained, and even if she was, she doesn’t have the right tools, does she?

But he believes Gavin when he says Connor saved his life. Not because of the little girl. But some other level. Maybe he was on the ice that night, hoping it would breakthrough. Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he would be eventually.

Connor leans forward, pressing a soft kiss against Gavin’s lips. Gentle and small and just as brief as the one he gave Gavin in the library the night before. He leans his forehead against Gavin’s, lets the grip on his hand hold on far too tight.

“Don’t be stupid,” he whispers. “You saved mine first and far more often.”

“Maybe. How the hell would you know?”

Connor laughs as Gavin’s hand comes up, pulling his beanie off, threading his fingers through his hair, across his face. Outlining the shape of his mouth as he smiles.

“Good last look if I die, you know.”

“You’re not dying,” Tina mumbles. Her only addition to their conversation so far, repeated as often as Gavin says otherwise.

And at least Gavin would have that. If Tina was lying—at least Gavin would have this if it means so much to him. But all Connor has is a drowsy-eyed boy who’s too cold and lost too much blood and looks deliriously tired and ghostly pale. He can’t die. Connor allows him to be selfish for a moment, thinking of how horrifying this version of Gavin would be to have living in his head. Not angry or happy just tired and exhausted and so ready to sleep. And he hasn’t found his brother yet. Gavin can’t die until then. He has to find what little family he has left. He has to survive a little longer.

“Hey,” Connor says when Gavin’s eyes start to close. “Stay awake for me, will you?”

“Okay,” he says. But he isn’t. His eyes are slipping closed again.

“Gavin,” he whispers. “Tell me about drowning your brother. I wasn’t listening the first time. Tell me about your grand murder scheme.”

“It… wasn’t on… purpose.”

The hand on Connor’s face falls away and Connor catches it, squeezing it tightly. Willing the painful grip on his other hand to come back.

“He needs blood.”

He knows.

He knows that.

But it wasn’t Tina’s voice that said it. A strange’s, followed by the soft growl of a dog.

He looks to the door at the man standing there, a gun aimed at them. Not the simple pistols that the angels use, but a shotgun, long and menacing, and held out at none of them in particular, which seems to rest it in the middle on the least threat of them all. None of them move. Gavin is practically dead and doesn’t seem to notice the exchange at all, Tina’s hands continue to work.

“We don’t want trouble,” Connor says. “Just—”

“Just a place for your friend to heal.”

“Yes.”

“He needs blood,” he repeats. “Do you know what his type is?”

Connor shakes his head, “I’m O negative, but we couldn’t find--”

The stranger moves, pulling up a floorboard on the other side of the shed, retrieving a white box. He props it up on one of the shelves, pulling out all these things that Connor barely recognizes from his childhood. Tubes and bags and needles.

And he realizes he doesn’t even know if what he said was true. If he has O negative blood. It isn’t the same for angels like it is for humans, but the core of it is the truth. All of them are universal donors for humans, albeit not for each other. It’s by virtue of being whatever they are. Angel or bird or something else entirely. His blood won’t heal Gavin much faster like it’ll heal him faster, but it won’t kill him either. But it’s blue, and he has no idea what type of person this stranger is. He doesn’t know if the blue is going to change anything at all. He just knows Gavin needs the blood.

Tina seems to scoff at the stranger’s hiding place. What a stupid place for medical supplies that could’ve helped Gavin so much earlier.

He separates the things needed for Tina to repair the damage to Gavin’s insides while instructing Connor on what to do. Shed his jacket, pull up his sleeve, prepare to feel light-headed. But he’s already light-headed. His adrenaline is starting to wear off and the wound on his leg hasn’t stopped bleeding and the pain is starting to come back again. He sits down while the stranger— _ Hank _ , he says at some point during the hazy scene—finds a vein and takes his blood. He doesn’t say anything about it being blue. Not a word as it leaves Connor in a wordless sigh.

This could kill him, if he were human. It might even kill him anyway. Angels aren’t that easy to get rid of, but his eyes fall closed and at some point when he’s resting against the chair with his arm held out, the world goes black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi i forgot to update this last week. but here we are again


End file.
